


Dreamers Live to Die

by Loushia



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Blood and Gore, F/F, F/M, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prostitution, and blaire trying to avoid stressful events as much as possible, but romance does eventually happen because why not, i am horrible at tags, it is based around social politics, the main point of the story is not romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:01:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21913354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loushia/pseuds/Loushia
Summary: I did the cowardly thing and tried to avoid the future as much as possible, even with all the devastatingly powerful information behind my lips. But alas, fate found its way to bite me in the ass. [SI-OC Gale's twin sister]
Relationships: Annie Cresta/Finnick Odair, Katniss Everdeen & Gale Hawthorne, Katniss Everdeen & Peeta Mellark
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Dreamers Live to Die Chapter 1
> 
> I did the cowardly thing and tried to avoid the future as much as possible, even with all the devastatingly powerful information behind my lips. But alas, fate found its way to bite me in the ass. [SI-OC Gale's twin sister]
> 
> Published 2019.12.23

Hazelle Hawthorne squeezed her husband's hand so hard her fingers felt the slightest bit numb from the pressure. This pain, of course, was nothing compared to what the birthing process happening down below.

"It's crowning! The baby's crowning!" The head healer exclaimed. A midwife gasped and ran to the side of the room to collect the final materials for the birth.

The soon to be mother screamed and writhed from the pain, and her husband, Blaise Hawthorne, did his best to soothe his wife by whispering sweet nothings into her ear. Deep down in the Seam, there were no prolific painkillers offered in the ramshackle hut Mrs. Everdeen, the head healer, had assigned to be the area's hospital.

"Is - ah, ahhh! - is it almost over...?!" Hazelle cried out, seemingly squeezing her husband's hand even tighter, if that were possible.

A baby's muted cries pounded in the musty room, suddenly making all of the effort behind child bearing worth it. The midwife, some gangly teenage girl whose name Hazelle had forgotten in the haze of emotion, cleaned off the baby with a clean towel and gently handed it into the mother's outstretched arms.

"It's a boy," the midwife added. "Just as you predicted."

Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne gazed lovingly into the newborn's squishy red face, his name at the tip of their tongues.

"Gale," the father whispered. "He'll be our little Gale Hawthorne."

A sharp contraction kicked through Hazelle - only this time, more painful than before. She screamed in pain, allowing her husband to pick the baby off her chest to look down at the growing puddle of blood where the head healer just cleaned.

Mrs. Everdeen raced back to the birthing station, gasping in surprise with one word: "Twins!"

The new parents blinked dumbly when another contraction hit and another baby started crowning. Six minutes later, a second baby was nestled in the parents' arms.

The twins each had a mop of fluffy black hair, pudgy pinkish skin, and lungs made of steel. The healer and the midwife left the room, arms full of bloodied cloths, for the new parents to spend time with their newborn twins.

"I didn't know that twins ran through your gene pool," Blaise whispered in awe, running a hand through his wife's sweaty hair. "What should we name her?"

Hazelle gave a simple smile. "Her name will be Blaire. Gale and Blaire Hawthorne, our children."

* * *

I worried my parents a lot while growing up as a baby up till the end of my toddler years because of all the denial I was in during that time period. Living in _Panem_. Twin sister to _freaking Gale Hawthorne. District Twelve. The Seam_. Of course I was in denial - who'd even dream up this type of rebirth? I barely spoke, didn't defer to adults because I couldn't find the connection between kids respecting adults because my mind was that of an adult, and never whined about smaller portions at the dinner table when our parents' work was slow.

When Rory and Vick, another pair of twins, were born, however, I began to wonder how on earth mom and dad were going to support four children. Dad, a coal miner, and mom, a vendor at the Hob who mainly sold carved squirrel bones, had barely enough to support the household. Especially considering how much time mom spent taking care of two five year olds and newborn twin boys. It was then that I wizened up, shook out of my stupor, and put effort into supporting my new family.

Wisps of memories from my past life seeped into the new one, where, once I enrolled into school, shocked the teacher with the way I could already read the most difficult books and helped the older kids do their maths. Instead of getting bullied for the display of intelligence, students and the teacher respected me. In District Twelve, having a set foundation for future work represented how successful you could become, possibly even finding work in the merchant section or with the local government with the Mayor or in the Justice Building. I sat through classes with my twin, helping him learn to read and write and helped him memorize the funny local songs the children liked to sing. Instead of thinking Gale as my twin, though, he was more of a younger brother than anything. Physically, I knew he was older (by six whole minutes!), but even our parents accepted the fact that I'd be the one looking out for him.

While our parents were out at work, it was up to us to look after our baby brothers. Rory and Vick never stopped crying, making me concerned that at least one of them had a form of colic, but it wasn't like Healer Everdeen had the supplies to officially diagnose something as common as "irrational crying," considering their ages.

I was eight years old when I first met the Girl on Fire. Mom gave me a single coin and sent me off to find a healer to purchase medicine off of for Rory's burning fever. It was only by miracle that Vick hadn't also been infected with whatever ailed his identical twin. I knocked on the Everdeens' door for the first time, a wave of unease at being sent alone for this errand. The Seam wasn't the safest place for weak little children, especially after Peacekeepers had found out about the crazy old couple who lived just a few doors down from us, the Hawthornes, who picked off little children during play hours to cannibalize on them. Hunger did strange things to people.

When a haggard young woman answered the door, she ushered me inside, commenting something about my age and gender.

"Rory's got a fever so bad that he can't stop crying," I explained to the blonde woman, watching as she lead me to her living room, where a wobbly shelf of mason jars were all stocked with different types of herbs and medicinal pastes. "Is this enough to pay for some medicine?"

A six year old girl with black hair that matched mine, greyish blue eyes, and skin the slightest bit paler than the usual olive complexion, peeked her head from out the hallway with peeling wallpaper. "Mom? Who's she?"

Katniss Everdeen didn't look any different than the average six year old from District Twelve, which was more surprising than seeing her so differently than from how she was portrayed in the books and movies. She wasn't old enough to establish herself with her famous bow and arrows, didn't have her elegant and lithe hunter body yet, and was just a simple little girl in a power hungry world. The savior of Panem still spoke with a lisp and appeared constantly on the verge of tears, and I felt sicker than I had before the denial had set in all those years ago. She was expected to carry the weight of the nation on her shoulders as the rebellion's figurehead and victor of the seventy-fourth Hunger Games. How would her mother react if I told her that her daughter was going to be in games for her sixteenth year?

Mrs. Everdeen snatched up the single coin with her bony fingers and replaced my open palms with a small glass vial filled to the brim with greenish brown paste. "I want the vial back by tomorrow," she responded, locking her pale blue eyes with my own grey ones. She turned her head to wave Katniss away, and I darted back home.

That wasn't the first interaction with the Everdeens, however. Later on that year, Katniss enrolled into the dilapidated three room building we called school. She sat alone in the back row, chewing at the end of her pencil in concentration while reading through water damaged books the Capitol deemed okay for the districts to teach their kids with. Most of them were district issued textbooks that hadn't been replaced in a few dozen years that spoke propaganda every other page, but it wasn't like the children knew any better. Gale nudged his elbows into my ribs whenever Katniss passed by us during recess time, telling me a horrifyingly gushy new tale about how she picked her nose during morning announcements or wore a pretty ribbon in her hair that day or whatever. His schoolboy crushes weren't something to be shocked about, as I knew he'd choose a new girl to gush over in a week. In the future, I knew that he was supposed to be apart of a love triangle with the baker's son, Peeta Mellark, but that kind of drama seemed so unlikely given everything I knew about my brother.

Over by the crooked iron merry-go-round were the blond haired blue eyed kids from the merchant section, the unsaid rich kids. Maybe Peeta was one of the loud boys spinning round and round in circles, but it wasn't like I really paid attention during first day assembly and could match names to each chubby face.

That was a telling sign of my laziness more than anything, as there were only forty kids per class. It wasn't like it could be too hard to memorize all their distinct features.

"I thought you didn't like 'ring around the rosie,'" I shoved Gale's ribs back. He responded with a quiet oomph noise.

He rubbed at his side angrily. "Yeah, 'cause the song sucks! Why?"

With a smirk, I pointed my finger at Katniss' current location - singing 'ring around the rosie' with a bunch of other girls by the hopscotch section.

Sure enough, he began crushing on some other classmate the next week.

The next year, Gale decided to skip school for a mysterious project he refused to tell anybody about. Anybody but me, of course. He wanted to go out to the border and throw rocks at the twenty foot electric fence to "vent out some anger" from his irritations for Peacekeepers. Apparently, a fight had broken out by the Hob the day prior, resulting in Peacekeepers taking action way too far and shooting both aggressors. Because I knew the electric fence, according to the story of 'The Hunger Games' from my previous life, was barely on, I let him go without a hassle. The teacher didn't even notice his absence, too busy teaching addition and subtraction to rowdy kids.

He returned late at night, when our parents were worried half to death at his apparent status as a missing person.

"It worked!" He burst out, climbing through our bedroom window and most definitely scaring me awake. Rory and Vick slept in our parents' room, while Gale and I were crammed in our own little bedroom upstairs. Well. It was what used to be the attic, but the less amount of people in one room, the better. I had always found myself needing more solitude than most.

I rose from bed, slamming a hand over his mouth. "Shhh! Don't wake Rory and Vick! And what worked?"

He grinned sheepishly at his outburst, but still remained extremely eager when he handed me a stinky pile of sticky fur. "A rabbit. A rabbit! Apparently, the fences aren't actually electric or maybe they are but don't turn on, so I went past the border and found a really sharp stick and then this rabbit appeared by my feet so I stabbed it really quick because I was afraid that it'd run away and - !"

The door slammed open. "Gale!" Mom cried out. "My goodness, when we heard your voice... you're here!"

Downstairs, Rory and Vick woke up, as noticed by the subsequent crying. I scooted away from her blabbering to check on the twins downstairs.

In the end, the Gale decided to lie about his adventures and why he was carrying around a dead animal. What went unsaid was that if our parents knew about him venturing beyond the district's borders and illegally hunting, they'd be shot dead to make a statement. If they remained in the dark... well, then it'd just be us two getting shot in the head. Or brutally whipped and therefore permanently scarred.

I went with him the next day, a pulse of fear pounding through my heart as we through the wire spurred fence in the mountains. Since District Twelve was set throughout what had been called Appalachia in my previous life (or was this the future? Had Suzanne Collins effectively retold the world events of the future? Had I been reborn five hundred years ahead?), I remembered there to be copperheads, porcupines, black bears, and brown recluses roaming through the nature. All the danger created a nerve wracking thrill through my blood, knowing that it was a fine line to walk between rebellious against the Capitol and just plain stupid while in the wild.

We challenged each other to climb trees faster, dodge through anthills with resounding agility exercises, and track down prey without making a sound. Soon enough, we missed school at least once a week in exchange for teaching ourselves how to hunt, run, and hide from all manners of predator and prey. Our parents never asked about why we returned home with cuts and bruises and dirt coating underneath our fingernails, but they shared a knowing look. We never talked about how we were able to come home every Friday (Friday was our school skip day) with bound up game hidden underneath our shirts, but Rory and Vick's eagerness for high-calorie meats more than made up their furtive and worried glances.

It was a glorious day in the late autumn that year when we discovered a river winding up to a small lake up high in the mountains. The water was shockingly cold, but temperature was ignored in favor of Gale dunking me straight off a mossy ledge and into the lake. For a split second, while surrounded by icy waters, a fear washed over me that I'd never be able to resurface and that Gale would have to somehow explain to mom and dad and Rory and Vick how we ventured beyond the borders and how I met my untimely death underneath the surface and - !

I pumped my legs upwards, emerging from my thoughts of drowning. Of course I could swim, having been on a high school swim team in my previous life (and the damned book club, where I fell in love with the all too familiar words of 'The Hunger Games,' and isn't it interesting to look at me now?). "Come on loser, jump in! It's nice and cold!"

Gale, though, did not know how to swim. I had forgotten that little fact in the haze of the moment, until my brother hadn't resurfaced from his crashing dive. After a moment's panic, I inhaled a gut breaking breath and went under, noting that opening my eyes under water didn't hurt in mountain freshwater. Near the bottom of the lake, tangled amidst waving black lake plants, was my twin brother. He opened his mouth to screech 'Help!' but only bubbles exited. Of course I understood his message and made him grab on to my waist so I could tug him back to the riverbank.

Because he was a stupid big brother, he forced himself to go back in the lake just minutes after his near-drowning spell. Apparently it wasn't "manly" to not know how to swim, even though basically no one in the district could, anyway.

Our jaunts in the forbidden woods led us to discover our natural skills. Gale became skilled with a bow and arrow carved from broken off twigs - weaponry I had carved. While woodworking wasn't an option of a profession in the Seam or the merchants section, it _was_ in the Hob. While the Hob was indeed a black market, it also served a secondary purpose for finding items at cheaper costs when merchants or business owners wanted to save on money. Gale gave mom extra squirrels, frogs, and bunches of huckleberries, while I offered her knick knacks of carved wooden toy animals, bits of easy to make household items like cups and utensils, and bunches of rope. It wasn't as sturdy as store bought rope, but tightly weaving together flattened strings of bark and ivy branches held similar strength and flexibility to regular rope. Again, she never questioned where we managed to get ahold of these supplies, only thanking us very quietly when our meals grew longer and bigger than before from our hunting and her increased sales.

The odd thought of being selected for the Hunger Games did pass through my mind at one point, but I dismissed it before it had fully formed. After all, future-Gale hadn't been picked in his full six years with his forty two future tesserae, so why would I? The brutal games would be disbanded and the rule of the capitol would be completely disbanded by the time Gale and I became adults, anyway, so it didn't really seem to matter all that much to me.

Perhaps it was cruel to just casually dismiss the blood sports, but I knew the future, and it looked bright enough. The Girl on Fire killing President Snow and Coin, resulting in District Eight's rebellion leader to take the mantle for the country - I distinctly remembered that leader to be a courageous middle-aged black lady who had her head screwed on right - so any movements I made had the possibility of changing that bright future. Gale hadn't had a twin sister in the future I knew of, so hopefully nothing majorly different was going to happen to the second uprising.

The next year, a tiny autumn haired girl enrolled into school. Her name was Primrose Everdeen and was a student in the class I had become a Teacher's Assistant for. In the same classroom were also Rory and Vick, whose mischievous and spritely little faces became known as the Terrible Twins. I suspected ADHD from how awful their attention spans were, but the class teacher, Miss Milligan, and I were able to knock back their childish pranks and outbursts into line.

Primrose, or "Prim," was a sweet darling with more brains than most. I could see why Katniss treasured her precious sister so much. A whole rebellion was sparked from this puny child, and here I was helping her with her science homework.

The science coursework wasn't in depth enough for people to suddenly invent nuclear weapons to bomb the Capitol, of course, but it still was extremely dumbed down, even for the poorest district like ours. Thousands of scientific and mathematics trivia flew through my mind, but I'd never be able to put it to use, except for maybe bomb-making for the coal mines. Except I was pretty sure that the Capitol supplied the explosives, not that the citizens made them.

With that in mind, I wondered how on earth Mrs. Everdeen was able to become the Head Healer, then decided I probably didn't want to know.

Because of the new teaching position (unpaid, sadly enough, but definitely assured that I'd acquire the position of a teacher by the time I became of age and take the elderly Miss Milligan's spot), I wasn't able to hunt with Gale on our skip day anymore. He didn't get mad, but his mood noticeably soured as the weeks passed by.

And everything soured when a good majority of the men from the Seam died in a huge explosion when Gale and I turned eleven. Our father, Blaise Hawthorne, being among the men who risked their lives for the nation's coal. The stress induced mom to start a premature birthing, as she had been around eight months pregnant with her fifth child. I didn't remember Gale mentioning anymore siblings besides Rory and Vick in the movies, so perhaps it was a new development from my presence or something I had missed in the books. Either way, the new baby was going to add stress to our lives.

Mrs. Everdeen was too pre-occupied mourning the loss of her husband, so Gale, a midwife I didn't know the name of, and I helped mom for the birth. It was a miracle that she was able to recover and stand back on her feet just moments after the birthing was done and a cleaned up baby girl cried in my arms, but our family needed the money now that dad was gone.

I admired her strength, her will to trudge on for her family. Because of this, Gale started skipping more and more school to hunt and gather more food, while I brought Posy to class with me so mom could continue her search for better paying work while unhindered.

Mom eventually found work as a washer for the richer merchants, cleaning their linens and scrubbing their homes clean. Stress lines built onto her beautiful face, and her hands became mottled with cuts and bruises from her heavy handed job, but it kept the family afloat until Gale learned how to hunt bigger game.

The day he lugged back home an entire white spotted fawn was the night before our first Hunger Games. We tried to keep a normal conversation throughout dinner, not wanting to even talk about the haunting topic.

"You cooked the deer very well," I complimented mom. "Since when did we have salt?"

She laughed off the question, continuing the false peace of the night to let our little siblings have one last happy memory if we were to be picked for that year.

Gale ended up revealing that he made a new friend, later in our room.

"Her name's Katniss, and she also uses a bow and arrow," he whispered across the distance of our rickety beds. "I thought her name was 'Catnip' at first because she kinda mumbled her introduction when we ran into each other."

What went unsaid was that he had replaced me as his hunting partner. It hurt a lot more than expected, as I knew that teaching was a better suited profession to me. Perhaps I was just childishly jealous over Gale making a new friend when I had been his friend since birth. We were twins and had never been separated for any reason for more than a day.

"I'm glad," I instead chose to say, swallowing away my jealousy. "It's good that she also knows how to hunt. Hey, I betcha she's waaay better at a bow than you are."

"Hey!"

* * *

The skies were clear and unnaturally blue in District Twelve on the sixty-eighth annual Hunger Games, not quite reflecting the spirit of the people. The day of the reaping was always set on the fourth of July, which the date held more cultural significance in the country's past than it did now. In America, it had been a day of celebration. In Panem, it became a day of mourning. Our family hadn't had to attend the reaping day ceremony as no one of our family was of age, but now mom had to stand in the back of the guarded groups of children in front of the Justince Building square. My skin was scrubbed till it was unnaturally shiny and clean, showing my tanned olive skin and the splash of freckles running from cheek to cheek. Braids were customary among women, but I liked to keep mine short and just below my jawline, despite mom's protests. She did try her best to flatten it down and smear it down with water, but I bet that by the end of the ceremony, it'd mess itself up somehow.

"I forgot about today," Vick murmured into my ear when I picked him up into my arms. The seven year old boy hugged my midsection tight and I kissed his mess of curly black hair. The more rambunctious twin, Rory, rammed himself straight into my side and began sniffling.

"You're going to get snot all over her new dress," Gale reminded, gently leading the twins away to mom, who smiled bitterly by the door, Posy wrapped in a long scarf to her chest. For the first time in forever, she remained quiet on the solemn walk to the Justice Building, only slightly babbling and drooling against mom's chest.

I held Vick's hand while walking while Gale took Rory's. When we had to separate into our age and gender sections, I kissed each of the twins' cheeks, Posy's soft forehead, and gave mom and jerky hug. There were tears in everybody's eyes except for innocent baby Posy, gently giggling at her pudgy fingers.

"See ya later," I nodded at Gale, who held less assurance than I did about the day's events. He nodded back in our secret twin language, now relaxed. If I was confident neither of us were getting picked, then we weren't. It was that simple.

A willowy woman wearing a bright pink dress covered in plastic bubbles and a large wig the shape of a smooth magenta sphere bounced up on stage - Effie Trinket. And then came my first introduction to Haymitch Abernathy, the only living victor of District Twelve and the sole resident of the Victor's Village. He had won the second Quarter Quell, the fiftieth Hunger Games, at the age of sixteen. While the reruns playing around the merchants section avoided talking about his game as much as possible, I knew the truth of what had happened. He had used the arena field to his advantage and gotten his entire family killed off for it. Now, he lived as an infamous drunkard, the main source of income for Ripper back at the Hob, who supplied all the illegal types of alcohol. I wasn't sure how Ripper got his hands on alcohol made in other districts, but I suspected the man had a distiller in his backyard that the Peacekeepers kept a blind eye to.

The victor had stringy blond hair and storm colored eyes (so he followed the descriptions from the film? But Gale looked nothing like a younger Liam Hemsworth), and drunkenly swaggered on stage beside Effie, hunched over and a glazed look in his eyes. I felt a brief flash of pity for the man, but diverted my attention to the screen hologrammed to the front of the Justice Building starting to play the annual reaping day ceremony film. It began with the classic war propaganda obviously written by the war's winners and ending with a short sequence of last year's games. Mom had forbidden us all to watch any of the gruesome Hunger Games films, but Gale and I, naturally, sneaked over to a hide in the alley facing the front of a technology applications shop, where they showed each game in a cycle day and night. Last year, according to rumors spread by Madge, the mayor's daughter in the year below us, the victor of the sixty-seventh Hunger Games had been a real hunk. Augustus Braun from district one. The name rang a bell in my head, but he didn't ultimately seem to be important to the future events.

"And now, it's time to pick out this year's female tribute!" Effie exclaimed. I shook myself out of my stupor, now needing to pay attention. While it wasn't like I was about to be picked, I thought to remember every tribute's names in my upcoming years to pay them respect.

The Capitol woman delicately picked out a flimsy piece of paper and the tension in the air seemed to thicken. No one wanted to be picked. No one wanted to be subjected to blood sports. No one wanted that for themselves, their children, their friends, their family.

"Annemarie Hatters!" Effie shouted, wearing a vibrant smile.

I breathed out a sigh of relief alongside all the other girls who didn't get picked. Annemarie, however, a medium height and wiry blonde girl from the seventeens section, trembled on the walk towards the stage. Her coloring and well tailored clothes shouted merchants section, but the expression on her face shouted the terror of death that most people in the Seam wore during the lean winter months, in the imminent threat of starvation. She, however, would not being starving to death. No, with her timid walk and demure stature, she'd be apart of the first blood bath at the Cornucopia.

The crowd of boys stood stock still as Effie reached her hand into the male's section. "Samandriel Hatters!"

Oh god, siblings. While it wasn't the first games featuring siblings as the district's male and female duo, it was always terrible for the parents.

As expected, a woman shrieked in the back section, screaming about how it was unfair both of her kids had been selected. I turned my head to catch Gale looking straight at the ground, fists clenched. In odd twin synchronization, he looked up to meet my eyes. 'Told you,' I mouthed, offering a half-shrug.

Once the reaping ceremony was over, Gale and I walked home, holding Rory and Vick's clammy hands. "One in hundreds," I reminded Gale. "We're not going to get picked. The odds will forever be in our favor," I mimicked a Capitol accent with that catchmark phrase, elbowing his ribs.

He smiled.

Now that we were of age, mom didn't have an excuse to stay at home during the nation wide broadcasts of the games. Parents could take the option to not watch the games if she had children below twelve, but now she was required to turn on our shaky old television set whenever a Peacekeeper knocked on the doors to check all homes that people were watching. If someone's television screen was not on, or if they didn't have one, they'd be escorted to the main town square to watch on the displays. Throughout the first week of the Capitol tour for the tributes, watching was only mandatory for a few hours, as televised training periods and interviews weren't as interesting as being glued to the screen for the actual arena time. Luckily, there was an old woman who stayed in the school building and looked after young children that shouldn't be inside watching the games. The Peacekeepers tolerated this to happen because the old lady probably wasn't in the right mind in the first place to watch the games, being over ninety years old.

One week later, the games began at exactly ten a.m. sharp. Schools were out, careers were optional to go to, and everyone stayed in front of a screen by order of the Peacekeepers and government to watch the "enthralling" blood sports. The sixty-eighth Hunger Game's arena was set in a savanna, where large rocks and grossly twisted trees and large puffs of long yellow grasses. And then - Gale and I leaned closer into the television while mom leaned back, covering Posy's ignorant ears - a loud explosion billowed from a middle sector girl.

"Woo! Did you see that, fellow audience members?!" Came Caeser Flickerman's narration in the background. The screen flickered to his face, where this year he had opted to die it a set of blue and purple stripes, and his tumultuous laugh. "Avril Avergotch from district seven just exploded. It seems to me that her token, a rosewood toy ball, had dropped from her pocket and onto the ground. And everyone knows to not step off the platform during the first sixty seconds! Oh dear!"

The screen cut to a live audience inside a studio from the Capitol filming site, then back to the arena.

In the end, the winner was the male career tribute from district two. He was one hundred eighty pounds and over six feet tall with strong muscles all around, winning by bludgeoning his remaining district mate to death with a spiked mace. It was a brutish, gruesome death, but Gale and I couldn't seem to take our eyes off the blurry television screen that was bound to break any day now.

"Good thing that we're not going to get reaped, right? Blaire?" Gale nudged my side, a rare show of weakness in his voice.

I shook my head. "'Course not, silly."

The next day, we both put our names down to apply for tesserae.

* * *

On the morning of the sixty-ninth Hunger Games reaping ceremony, Gale and I sat in bed longer than usual, unwilling to face the rest of the day.

"We've got four tesserae to our names, now," he blurted out. "That's still a very low percentage to be picked, right?"

"Yes," I assured, washing away the uneasiness in our stomachs.

Since we both had shot up like weeds, mom was forced to tailor her and dad's old clothes for us to wear instead of buying new outfits. She gave me a faded baby pink dress that ended a little below my knees and had a scratchy high color and short sleeves. Gale wore musty brown slacks and a slightly stained cream button up shirt from dad's old stuff.

"When'd you get so tall?" I huffed, poking Gale's shoulders, where the top of my head just barely reached to.

He snorted, cracking a smile despite the current atmosphere. "When'd you get so short? I'm pretty sure Katniss, who's two years younger, is taller than you."

I playfully stuck my tongue out, then reached out to unbutton his collar a level. He looked way too stuffy in high collars.

"Blay-yuh!" Squealed out Posy, ramming straight towards my legs. "It's pink!"

"I swear, you learned to run before learning to walk," I commented, ruffling her patch of chocolate brown hair. "It's time to take a nap now, sweetie."

She resolutely did not want to go to sleep, so all mom could do now was make sure that Posy's eyes were covered throughout the entire reaping ceremony. No need to subject a toddler to that kind of stuff.

Rory and Vick didn't tear up when our family separated ourselves into our proper sections, but they did linger a bit longer than last year, almost making Peacekeepers forcibly break apart our hugs. Gale and I shared a wordless nod yet again as we divvied up. It was a look of assured calm; we were going to be fine. Hawthornes never get picked and never will be picked.

The Hunger Games would end after the third Quarter Quell, anyway. That was just six years away. Rory and Vick hadn't been picked according to the future knowledge during their brief tenure as of-age kids, anyway. We'd be fine. Everyone would be fine.

Effie appeared on stage in yet another glamorous outfit - this time, gold and diamond glittering bands clinking around her arms and legs, sapphire blue hair done in poofy curls, and a white shimmery skintight dress. Oddly enough, this had to be her most normal ensemble in her entire history of being here. She shouted nicely encouraging words that expectedly had no effect on our dull crowd, and let the reaping day film show. This time, at the end, were segments from last years games of the brutal savanna. Those games had been the "ideal" games, where everyone had seemed to be given an equal chance in terms of equipment and landscape knowledge, with fan favorite careers doing most of the bloody slaughtering. Caeser Flickerman had said something about those year's ratings being almost as high as the sixty-fifth Hunger Games featuring Finnick Odair.

"Now, ladies first!" Effie cried out in joy, teetering her way to the female's box of names. She fished out a single slip of paper.

My heart clenched in my chest.

"Blaire Hawthorne!"


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dreamers Live to Die Chapter 2
> 
> I did the cowardly thing and tried to avoid the future as much as possible, even with all the devastatingly powerful information behind my lips. But alas, fate found its way to bite me in the ass. [SI-OC Gale's twin sister]
> 
> Published 2019.12.30 on my ff.net account (Loopholes47)
> 
> Published 2020.01.14 on AO3 (Loushia)

"Blaire Hawthorne!" Rang out Effie Trinket's shrill voice.

All the girls in the thirteens section immediately made space for an exit path to the middle line to the stadium.

No.

No. No! Against my will, my feet moved steadily past the crowds, past Gale (I couldn't look at his face), past the front row sections, and onto the rise of the stadium stage. Noise distorted in my ears, the skies shone unnaturally blue, and Effie's strong perfume made me want to vomit all over her perfect little dress and perfect little shoes.

The noise of crying woke me out of my stupor. While Effie announced the boy's name - Yonner Bayaurch, emerging from the eighteens section - little Posy was screaming her head off in the background. She didn't understand what was going on other than that it was bad and mom was leaking a steady stream of tears and little Rory and Vick all the way back there were paler than snow and Gale... I shifted my glance to my brother, and his eyes were wider than saucers.

Yonner forced me to break the heart breaking eye contact when he offered his hand for the customary handshake. His hands were roughly calloused from work in the coal mines, as he was old enough to have started work down below. The main mines had been closed down after the huge explosion two years ago, but there were smaller mines scattered in the north that people were allowed to work in. Those mines, however, were of even worse conditions than the main ones. Therefore Yonner had to have contracted some sort of medical condition from working in there, or was just unnaturally strong. He had coppery red hair and green eyes, which were rare colors for District Twelve. His stocky build spoke of great strength, as did his handshake grip.

"Excellent!" Effie cheered, clasping her hands together. "This concludes the reaping ceremony! My, what a lovely day! Happy Hunger Games, and may the odds be ever in your favor."

A row of Peacekeepers escorted the capitol woman, us two tributes, and an unusually silent Haymitch, who was trailing along the back of the pack. Most years, he blurted out something stupid and collapsed onstage in a drunken stupor.

It was possibly the scariest few minutes of my life while locked alone in a guarded room for the farewell period inside the Justice Building. The fact that my name had been drawn amidst the hundreds of names in the box made me terrified that perhaps Rory or Vick or even Gale would have to face the shift of events that my presence brought. Maybe the future events never mentioned Gale having a twin sister because she had _died_ in one of the games.

The door sprung open after what felt like an eternity, welcoming the familiar tear tracked faces of my family.

"Oh, Blaire," mom cried, hugging me tight to her bosom. "I'm so, so sorry."

Posy was wrapped on her back, fast asleep after wearing herself out from her mini tantrum back during the ceremony. It was for the better, though. Posy's uncontrollable crying would have me bursting into tears, and I didn't want the Capitol to see any shred of weakness from me when I didn't want them to.

She unwrapped her shaking arms for Vick and Rory's turns for hugs. They let the tears fall freely this time.

"You lied," Vick choked. "You big, fat liar."

"You said that you wouldn't get picked last night. Remember?" Rory added, rubbing his eyes furiously.

While they occupied my arms, Gale hugged over them, stuffing my face into his chest. "By the time I get back, you'll be like ten feet tall," I tried joking, but the line came flat.

"I don't care what you do, but you just need to come back. Alright?" He demanded, voice cracking with emotion.

At any other time, I would've teased his voice crack, but the time was too serious. The sixty-ninth games didn't have anybody recognizable, but everyone was a danger.

"I'm not gonna die," I swore, looking him straight in the eye. He startled a bit at my tone. "I'm gonna come back home, no matter how deranged I'll become in the arena. We've got Hawthorne blood, right?"

At that moment, I looked straight at mom, who burst into another round of tear. "Just like your father..."

"Use whatever you've got up your sleeve," Gale struggled to say. "I don't care if you come back with blood on your hands - you just need to come back at all."

I nodded. "It's going to be okay, Gale."

It was so not okay. A pit of dread grew and dredged up anxiety and nerves until I was sure the room just started spinning.

The door burst open. "Time's up!" A Peacekeeper announced, a few more entering the room to rip off the twins' clawing grasps. Posy woke up and began screaming as they were ripped away from me. The heavy door thudded close with finality.

A curious object pressed against my leg, and I looked down to see a small lump in my pocket. Taking it out, it was revealed to be one of my little knick knacks: a wooden carving of an elephant the size of an eraser. Gale must have slipped it into my pocket during our brief farewell for my district token. A thoughtful last gift, as I hadn't expected to prepare a token in the first place. Really, who did?

Gale had once asked what the hell this carving was when I first presented it to our ever growing collection on our shelves back home. Elephants didn't exist in Panem - or at all, anymore - so he thought I had made a new magical creature, like the hippo or the penguin figurines decorating the kitchen.

The second time slot for visitors was occupied by a familiar elderly woman emerging into the room.

I quickly rose up. "Miss Milligan."

She strode over the long meeting room floor and wrapped her thin arms around my shoulders. "Oh, dear. I was looking forward to you taking my position."

That was it. No, "good luck" or "have a nice trip to the afterlife."

"What makes you think I won't come back?" I challenged out of spite.

She tutted and leaned back to fix my messy hair out of my eyes. "Dearie Blaire. I have full confidence that you're intelligent enough to survive the games, but I don't think you'd want to become a teacher anymore once you come back."

I offered her a wane smile. "We'll see."

She pecked my cheek, saying that she'll bid my goodbyes to our class for me, then left.

The third and last visitors, unexpectedly, were the Everdeens. Prim held Katniss' hands warily before approaching me. Their mother, unfortunately, was still suffering from mental problems from the trauma of losing her husband. Mrs. Everdeen's face was blanker than an empty sheet of paper, not a speck of the situation reaching into her mind.

"You were the best teacher I've ever had. Better than Miss Milligan," Prim murmured shyly. Katniss nodded awkwardly, standing back with her mother. "Please come back to become a real teacher this time."

I ruffled her autumn blonde hair, smiling at her affronted look for messing up her perfectly braided hair. "Of course, Prim," I lied. "Don't you worry. I'll even buy everyone at school new pencils and desks and all sorts of colorful playground chalk once I win the games."

She didn't smile at that, but Katniss nodded her head in a jerky thanks, then pushed her family out. It must suck to be the only one responsible for your family, I mused. Gale, mom, and I were the three providers for us Hawthornes, but Katniss had to be her family's sole provider. She was also smart enough to not buy in tesserae, severely limiting her chance to provide enough oil for her household.

I sat there in the lonely meeting room for what seemed like hours, investigating the mahogany furniture and the tiny silver cameras dotting the walls until Effie burst into the room with Yonner in tow.

"Lovely! You're all ready now," she said, ushering me out to greet another squadron of Peacekeepers. "We'll be heading to the cars now, where you'll be taking the train ride to the Capitol!"

A dim sort of amusement flooded my face. "A train?" I extended to Effie, allowing her the opportunity to speak more. It was out of my own best interest for the people in charge of me to invest their energy into keeping me alive as best as possible in the arena, and one way to do that was get Effie, my set crew, and Haymitch to like me. The old drunkard would be a challenge, but he seemed to admire strong and smart tributes; kids that had a chance of making it out alive.

"Oh, it's an absolutely marvelous piece of technology! You two are in for a treat," she recited, leading the way to behind the building, where a fancy black car lay in wait, protected by trucks of Peacekeepers. "Chrystal chandeliers, platinum doorknobs... and the train rides so smoothly it's like flying! We'll arrive at the capital at a rate of two hundred miles per hour."

Riding a car for the first time since my rebirth felt all too much like deja vu, except this time I actually knew what the memories behind the bumpy gravel filled ride had been about. The district twelve escort sat between Yonner and I, acting as a barrier. This was a smart move on her part, as I was almost certain the boy was preparing himself to murder me in cold blood by the way he glared into my soul.

"Chrystal chandeliers?" I inquired, forcing myself to entertain Effie's vibrant self. She wasn't really an annoying person, per se, and I knew she wasn't really a bad woman behind all her outgoing Capitol makeup, but the somberness of the day really didn't make me want to talk to her. She was simply too happy to be tolerable at the moment. "Are there any rainbow colored chandeliers?"

"Oh my! Of course there are, Miss Hawthorne. Can I call you Blaire? Yes? Alright. Of course there are rainbow chandeliers. There's rainbow everything in the Capitol. For example, there's a store on the Famous Blue street off the city center where..."

I droned her out politely, smiling and nodding while contemplating how to get Haymitch's favor. He had been enamored by Katniss and her brave stupidity and skill with a bow. Me? I could hardly glare for the life of me, was only moderately skilled in offensive knife work, and really only held any skill in passive hunting traits, like tracking, hiding, climbing, foraging, and making elaborately knotted traps. Well. When listed out, it sounded pretty good, but the usefulness of my skills all depended on the format of the arena. If it followed the style of a deciduous forest range, great. Problem solved. If it was anything other than a forest or mountain range, I'd be toast. My age wasn't the prime type for sponsors and my type of mean wit wasn't built to be catered towards Capitol citizens.

As a developing thirteen year old, no one in their right mind would want to sponsor me based on any kind of beauty or sexiness (unless they were pedophiles). I did find myself to be considerably attractive, with a cute nose and cheeks splashed with just enough freckles and thickly lashed light grey eyes that suited my round face especially well (hey, I could be arrogant about my looks, right?), but no thirteen year old could seduce a large enough crowd. My best option was to be an underdog. Everybody liked an underdog. Pleasant surprises and all that.

The fact that the youngest tribute to ever win the games had been a fourteen year old Finnick Odair did not help my self confidence in the slightest.

Haymitch hated his life because he was forced to bond with two children before seeing them inevitably sent to their deaths, right? All I had to do was convince him I had the slim chance of winning over the larger and stronger framed Yonner, to make him pull in enough sponsors to at least provide enough support in the arena.

Or I could pull a Johanna. But no, I didn't want to be known as unhinged in the end. The Capitol would eat it up and it wasn't like I was planning on keeping my morality intact out on the field, but being likeable sounded easier than acting out weirdly timid personas.

Crowds parted in the dirt packed streets out of respect. Familiar faces of neighbors, classmates, and Hob vendors zoomed by as the car picked up more speed away from the only town I had really known in Panem.

"Where's our mentor?" Grumbled out Yonnor, interrupting Effie's extended speech on rainbow products.

"Oh, he's, well. He's a bit of a drinker, so they already brought him to the train to rest in private quarters," our escort informed uneasily.

Yonnor scowled. "So he's useless, then. We're just going to die out there like everyone else, since we've got the shittiest drunkard of a mentor out of all twelve districts."

I wanted to tell him to stop talking, but he kept on ranting about the terrible fate of his circumstances until the Peacekeepers in the front of the car turned their seats back to point a gun at his head.

"This is a warning," growled the Peacekeeper. "Don't speak ill of your situation. It is an honor by the Capitol to be chosen for the games."

Yonnor wisely held his tongue this time.

The next half hour to the train station was devoid of conversation. The racing view of the tall cedars and pines I had grown up next to remained a dying comfort as the car and Peacekeeper trucks pulled into a small station leading to a long metal snake of a train. The dividers between compartments were barely visible with thin black lines of space, and the sleekness of the metal made the sight practically blinding against the sun's reflection.

"Amazing," I commented hollowly to Effie, who bounced back to her usual vibrant self.

"Of course, of course. Inside, there are refreshments - I hope you don't eat like savages like the usual district twelve crowd - that you can help yourselves to. I'll make Haymitch get out of his private quarters to welcome you two." She bounded into the train before us, her sapphire blue curls bouncing behind her. Because I didn't feel safe around Yonner, I made him head in first to watch my own back, an action that he grumbled something about having proper manners.

The door slid shut as soon as we were all gathered on, and a tell tale rumble signaled lift off. Still, the ride remained remarkably smooth. We walked towards an open door leading into an extravagant lounge room.

"Holy shit," Yonnor gasped, taking in the sights. I had to agree with him, finally realizing that the richness of the Capitol hadn't been exaggerated. In fact, it may have been under-explained, as shown by the decadent setting before us. Glimmering glass bowls displayed portions of pastries, jellies, jams, over a dozen types of breads, crisp and still wet fruit, platters of cheese, cured meats, and more. Off to the side was a table of alcoholic drinks set in large colorful prismatic bottles in a manner of funny geometric designs. The age of consent and alcohol and other legal adult activities in Panem was sixteen, so only Yonnor would be able to take anything from the section (legally, that is). Haymitch probably had his own private bar in his room.

Since there was no point in refusing to eat out of spite or hatred of the governmental regimes, Yonnor and I came to a wordless agreement that this lounge area was a truce area to enjoy the delicacies.

He piled nearly a little bit of everything on several plates before sitting down on a mahogany seat by a window, but I just opted for one plate of grapes and cheeses. Dairy products weren't imported to or from district twelve, and it had been a while since I had tasted the sharp bitterness of my classic favorites gouda and mozzarella.

A door opened ahead, revealing a haggard Effie dragging a stumbling Haymitch.

"Hey, lay off me," the man snapped, staggering into a table. "I can handle myself."

The escort threw her hands in the air, fuming. "I've got to talk to the drivers. But don't think I won't force you to talk to your tributes!"

After she left, Haymitch groaned and walked with an awkward gait to the chair in front of me. Yonnor moved himself to his diagonal seat, obviously wanting to hear what our mentor had to offer.

"Look, guys, I'm just here for the refreshments. So go off an enjoy yourselves before your inevitable fate met and the end of a knife," he slurred, grabbing a sloppy hand to the inside of his vest pocket, where a silver whiskey vial had been hiding. He took a long swig and burped.

"You - !" Yonnor stood up, fists clenched white. "You're supposed to help us, sponsor us! What kind of mentor are you?!"

The alcoholic giggled. "I told you, I'm just here for the refreshments. Want something to drink? The orange bottle o'er there's usually the best," he slurred even heavier, swaying from side to side before flat out passing out onto the floor.

Great. Just great.

Yonnor stormed back off to his corner to stare glumly at his food. Haymitch, despite imbibing copious amounts of alcohol everyday, was still a rather skinny man. Resolute in the belief that winning Haymitch's favors was the best way to win the games, I took the man's ankles and literally dragged the man away. My tribute mate may have sent me weird looks, but really, what was the harm in that? He was already prepared to take me out at a moment's notice in the arena, so it wasn't like I should even try getting a comfortable relationship with him. Our mentor, however, was the only one capable of actually helping me once in the arena, so it was best to help him.

All the private quarters were labelled, so it wasn't too hard to drag the man into his room down the main hallway. Because I didn't have the upper body strength to lift a full grown one hundred fifty to one hundred sixty pound man with my barely teenaged arms, he stayed on the fluffy carpeted ground, snoring away the day.

A flash of metal caught my eye. A silver knife the size of my forearm lay half-way hidden underneath an askew pillow on his silken bed covers. Even though it may have been rude to wander around his private quarters without his express permission, I couldn't help but reach for the knife an slight wonder. It had intricate gold carvings in the bladed edges, all trailing down to an ivory and jade handle. This knife appeared too flashy for Haymitch to own.

"It's pretty, ain't it?"

Immediately reacting out of shock, I expertly spun the perfectly balanced knife in my nimble fingers while whirling around, definitely prepared to stab the voice that made me startle.

Haymitch, still on the ground, jerked his arms up defensively. "Whoa. Easy there, tiger. I like your reflexes, but don't aim 'em at me."

This was the perfect time for a knife trick to impress him. I flipped the knife up, letting it just barely graze the ceiling, before catching it back in my hand without looking. It took years of nasty cuts and a particularly vicious squirrel (long story, don't ask) to pull that off, but it did make our mentor raise his eyebrows.

"Like that fire in you. Maybe you'll make it longer than the other tributes I usually get stuck with," he grumbled, lifting himself off the ground in an unsteady sway.

I threw the knife into the wall, noticing the small crack forming in the plaster. This was all for show, of course, as I really actually had terrible aim with anything long distance to save my life. But Haymitch didn't need to know that I hadn't meant for that knife to head in that direction... I just needed him to start paying attention to me.

"I can track, forage, climb trees and any rock surface, and tie knots and traps. While I realize that my strengths rely in passive abilities, you can help me choose which area to hone better in preparation of the games."

An unnamed emotion flickered in his eyes. "What about that knife just now?" He swaggered backwards, against the wall. "Can you - can you do impressive tricks with knives, better than the one just now?"

No.

"Depends on your idea of 'impressive,'" I instead smirked, propping a hand on my hip.

He barked out a laugh. "Hah! I can use some o' your arrogance. Bother me tomorrow. I need to sleep off all this drinking."

He tone was more resolute and sober than before, so I graciously ducked out his room to find my own private quarters.

Once there, I changed out of my faded pink dress, itchy white socks, and plain brown leather shoes for soft silk slippers and body hugging yet comfortable nylon sleeveless shirt and pants, all in varying shades of olive green. A high quality hologram set rested on the cream colored walls, so I flipped it on out of curiosity, only to be met with sudden bouts of gore.

So, they played the previous Hunger Games on the train to the Capitol. Typical.

Needless to say, I turned it off and tried taking a nap.

By the time I had woken up, the clothes strewn on the ground had been taken away, possibly forever, and my small wooden elephant laid on the bedstand. Perhaps avoxes had entered the room when I was unaware. The idea of people coming and going in a room where I rested was bothersome for reasons not needed to be explained.

The idea of heading into an arena designed to kill off innocent children sickened me to my core, but I didn't know what worried me more: the idea of trying to survive no matter the cost, or the loss of my sanity for being forced to play an immoral game.

I decided on both and called it a day.

Haymitch and Effie were sitting in the main lounge area, where the treats from before now turned into a much larger, heavier styled feast with large cuts of pork, bowls of potato products that smelled a little off, glasses of strange creams and spreads, and much more. I elected on choosing a meat heavy dinner and sat right in front of the two adults.

"Ah, at least she can use her manners, Haymitch!" Effie scolded, swatting Haymitch's hands before he could reach for the steak bits with his bare hands. "Try to set a proper example for your district!"

"It's alright, Effie," I soothed. "Let the man enjoy his last days in the relative quiet of the train. Don't alcoholics hate loud noises like cities?"

He cheered to that statement, propping a shoe-free foot on the low set coffee table between us. "Preach. Thanks, sweetie."

"Oh? So you're actually talking to the tributes, now?" Effie sniffed pointedly.

"Don't worry," I assured sarcastically. "He was drunk the entire time, no weird new changes."

Haymitch shouted. "Ha hah! I like this girlie. She's got _spunk_!"

So, being generally antagonizing to him but in the funniest way possible? Sure, I could deal with that. "I'd hope so, as I'm prepared to do anything, _absolutely anything_ , to return to my family alive."

He belched, waving his glass over the table. "Even at the cost of your humanity?"

My voice darkened. I needed to sell this act as much as possible. " _Anything_."

His eyes glazed over and that was when the final obstacle had been secured. Effie clasped her hands together and squealed in delight when Haymitch propped his glass down and relaxed back into his cushioned chair.

"We can't make you desirable because of your age, and you can't pull the intelligence act because of your age, and it's not like you have strength or skill for weaponry in spades to win over the audience," he said, mulling everything over.

"An underdog," Effie suggested. "Everyone loves an underdog!"

Except for President Snow, who hated underdogs. Or maybe he just hated everything period. It was hard to tell, really.

Haymitch snapped his fingers. "Yes, an underdog. But we need a secondary trait. You can't only rely on being an underdog character, as you're too snarky to be the typical little guy."

"My resounding wit?" I dragged on, drumming my fingers together.

He shook his head. "No, too young to be a classic comedian. I think the cute card would work well, but you've got to butter up to the audience a lot more than you might feel comfortable with."

"I will literally consider everything just to win and be able to see my family again," came the expected dry retort. "Lay it all on me."

* * *

At the beginning of the next day, the hours filled with careful planning and impromptu acting lessons ("stop being so snarky!" "shut it, old man!"), the train cut through the final stop of the Rocky mountains. Or, well, they weren't called that _now_ , but they had been called that when Panem used to be the United States of America. It was weird to think that the equivalent of the nation's main headquarters for national domination and dictatorship was Salt Lake City, Utah. Location wise. Fucking Utah.

Yonnor emerged out his room when the tunnels through the mountains cleared for the view to the lively city of the Capitol.

"Finally started drinking five barrels of moonshine rather than ten?" He snarked, seeing Haymitch act mostly sober during breakfast time. We carefully did not exchange any meaningful glances, knowing the boy would catch them. It would soon not become a secret that the mentor was favoring me over him, and I wasn't eager on letting that happen in an area like a passenger train.

"What, you respecting me now or somethin'? I always start the day with a healthy swig of twenty barrels," Haymitch slurred out, spreading a grossly thick layer of marmalade on his toast. Oh dear. His hangover must be worse than we had initially thought.

"Oh, Yonnor, Blaire, you should observe the sights of the city," Effie called out from the window seats, frantically waving a hand over. I noted with dumb absent-mindedness that each finger had three gold plated rings in the gaudiest display of jewelry my eyes had ever been privy to.

The city hadn't been done justice to in the film, that much could be said. Instead of plain concrete and stone formulaic skyscrapers, this utter metropolis held a rich vibrancy to it only discovered when I had visited Hong Kong and Tokyo in my previous life. Different levels of buildings used odd geometric sequences for its tinted windows, some buildings were set in highly saturated neon colors formed in seemingly structurally impossible formations, and the odd jumble of Roman architecture such as Corinthian columns lined plasticky and tacky shops along smooth, mica mixed concrete streets. Boisterous was a polite term for the color scheme, but the lively culture so easily displayed in contrast to District Twelve, even compared to its rich merchants section, held everything against it. Effie's funky Capitol accent would be heard from all over the city, which I was looking forward to the most, if tributes were given the opportunity to wander through the metropolis. Probably not, but at least it'd be fun to talk to my stylists.

"They... they live like _this_? When half the kids back home are on the brink of starvation?" Yonnor whispered against the glass of the window.

Haymitch sucked in a breath and patted the boy's shoulder. "Keep that information to yourself, kid. Your best shot at winning is making the Capitol like you."

The copper haired boy offered an unconvincing smile, but it was an improvement from looking constantly angry at the world. Angry rightfully so, but brains mattered over brawns in the upcoming week.

"We'll be taking you to the Remake Center, which is right next to the Victor's Squire and Training Centor, so you'll be right at home within just one block," Effie informed us simply as the train lulled to a stop and thousands of chattering fans awaited outside the doors. "Remember to smile at the people and all the cameras!"

Yonnor snorted and I immediately shoved on a bright smile as the doors slid open to reveal us to the world.

I knew from previous games that from here on out, we'd be televised every minute of our time in the capitol, from the doors of the welcoming train opening to the very last heartbeat in the arena. Perhaps spending the most amount of time during the opening ceremony, interviews, and a brief interlude over the training sessions, but that was all unimportant when the reality that I was about to be sent to a slaughterhouse in just a week. The safety of Katniss' inner thoughts from her book narrative was calming enough, but she had been in the relative familiarity of a deciduous forest. This year, it was probably going to be a war zone due to the number sixty-nine. While none of the residents alive in Panem may have remembered the infamous sex jokes behind the number, the number itself still held a weird amount of significance among street gurus and "list of favorite numbers."

Strange American cultures of the far past societies slipped into modern culture through centuries of heavy handed use and forgotten stories, which really hit home that this was a futuristic dystopian society.

Our escort to the Remake Center was made brief by keeping to ourselves and smiling the entire short walk to the pink cotton candy colored building in the shape of a light bulb. Upon entrance, a group of three strangely colored stylists immediately took my wrists and dragged me off into a different room. Effie chimed a jolly "good luck" before the door locked.

The three members of my personal prep team announced themselves as Flavius, Venia, and Octavia - classic Latin inspired names popular in the Capitol. I struck conversation with the three of them while they focused on waxing and scrubbing away dirt on my lower body in order to gain a sense of familiarity with them.

"Have any tributes refused to strip naked during the prepping?" I inquired, wincing at the painfully hot wax applied to my recently hairy legs.

Venia guffawed in exasperation. "Oh dear, absolutely yes! In fact, the girl we worked on two years ago was so painfully shy with her body she refused to let us even touch her torso! A nightmare case, I tell you."

Octavia, a woman with mint green skin and strange gems embedded into her temples, nodded exuberantly. "Ah yes, yes. In fact, you're the nicest and most compliant tribute we've had the pleasure of working with so far! Good grief!"

Flavius rubbed a lavender smelling lotion on my legs that was speckled with shimmery glitter bits while sighing in their gossiping. "If it's anything we hate, it has to be whiny customers."

I laughed along, nodding cheerfully. "Of course, that makes sense. The fullest extent of your talents would doubtlessly create a perfect human being."

Octavia pressed a hand against her heart. "Oh, you warm my heart, darling."

It took just over an hour to finish cleaning and pruning my body to perfection ("you're young yet, doesn't need too much waxing and facials") before I was sent into an adjacent room with an eagerly awaiting stylist.

She announced herself to be Potentia, and had been working with District Twelve for the past five years. Since she was not the genius that was Cinna, a scant thirty minutes later, I emerged into a waiting area wearing a gross depiction of my home - namely, a dress made of rocks. Potentia didn't use actual coal because the structure of the material wasn't compatible with whatever design she wanted weaved into the heavy duty linens of the lumpy, unflattering dress. Sadly enough, I looked better off than Yonnor, who was only wearing a simple white loincloth, a fake coal chest-plate, and a black helmet covering most of his notable facial features.

"Wow, how sexy."

"Oh, shut it," He snapped, his neck flushing red. "At least you still look like a person."

He had a point there.

Effie and Haymitch creaked a door open to our side, then our mentor immediately burst into giggles.

"Ah, it just gets worse the more I look at it!" He exclaimed, holding his sides.

Effie's face became strained. "Well, it's certainly better than five years ago, remember? Poor dears wearing nothing but coal dust and miner's hats. Not even a speck of makeup on their pale faces."

"Haa... true, oh gosh. This is still hilarious. Not terrible enough to diminish your chance for sponsors, though. Just the right amount of funky to pull some interest in. Potentia and her apprentice really pulled through this year."

Yonnor buried what was left of his face in his hands. "When does the chariot ceremony start?"

* * *

Seeing how we were the loser district, nobody came to interact with us during the small waiting period on the bottom floor of the Remake Center, where the back waiting area was a glorified stables. All the horses were surprisingly well trained, not even needing reigns to guide their actions.

"Selective breeding," I pointed out to Yonnor who was petting our coal black horses' manes. "The Capitol breeds the perfect horses through something called selective breeding."

He raised an eyebrow. "Oh, right. You were a teacher's assistance for a while, weren't you."

"And you a coal miner," I shot back, unwilling to provide any edge. He grinned with too many teeth.

A blast of music spreads through the air in what I presumed to be trumpets as our mentor, stylists, and escort step back to the sides in order for the doors to open and the ceremony to start.

"Smile!" Effie reminded as we climbed onto the jet black chariot drawn by our four tame horses. And then the massive doors ahead of the chariots swing wide open and a cheering crowd began to reveal itself.

District one went first, then two, then three, and eventually it was our turn. The horses trot along at a faster pace than expected, rounding up the entire pack of twenty four tributes shown.

The dazzling city lights and humongous crowds of people were overwhelming at first, but the more my resolve to win and go home strengthened, the more calm I felt in my security to charm over the people of the Capitol and of Panem as a whole. The gamemakers tried to create easier situations for fan favorites, after all, as they brought up the viewing rates and general economic flow of the citizens.

I waved with all the glamour and glitter shining through my eyes, blowing little fairy kisses at the people. Perhaps Gale would find my ensemble hilarious, I thought, and suddenly my smile widens at the thought of my twin.

Finally, through the pulsating in my head from the rapid beats of funky electronic music booming overhead in speakers, the chariots aligned themselves around the City Circle in front of Snow's mansion. The music cut to a close and President Snow emerged from his balcony. And intense amount of hatred fueled threw me at the simple sight of his face and overly swollen lips. The national anthem turned on at the end of his propaganda filled speech concerning the ultimate power of the Capitol and the history behind the games and the amazing new sport created out of a well earned lesson. And then the parade ended like it started, with fast paced jaunt all the way to a different building, the Training Center. It's massive new doors shut closed and Yonnor sighed in relief at the end of the whole spectacle.

"Stupid helmet," he mumbled, ripping it off his head.

The layout of the Training Center's ground floor remained identical in shape and structure to the previous Remake Center, down to the lime green doors for the horse stables and the electric blue ceiling tiles. Even though partnering up and forming alliances was a solid way to win the games, it most likely would put an ever larger target on my back if I were to talk to the other tributes milling towards the elevators to reach their floor. That was because in a group, the other members would most likely be willing to form the consensus decision that I would be the first to go, throat slit in the middle of the night, due to my young age and slight stature as an underfed barely teenage girl.

Unwilling to share an elevator with other districts, Yonnor and I waited until we were the last to go to ride the elevator alone.

"How was your prep team?" I drawled out, leaning against the glass walls of the luxury elevator box. Its design held a futuristic decoration and usage of glass, but the elevator overall appeared to function like the average one did back during the twenty-first century. I supposed that people were to busy killing each other using bigger and better nuclear technology rather than investing time into efficient travel systems. Seriously, those aircrafts had better not run on fossil fuels, or else I'd hate President Snow even more for just messing up the environment.

Yonnor shivered. "Ugh, it was horrible. They literally poured burning hot wax on my armpits and ripped all my hair out for the sake of 'perfection.'" He kicked the elevator door. "Capitol idiots, the lot of 'em."

While true, it remained the wise decision to not voice that thought aloud. Especially while _in_ the Capitol.

"Floor: District Twelve," the elevator chimed monotonously, then revealed a floor with wonders only compared to something Tony Stark would build over the weekend.

We stepped out onto lush carpeted floors, heads spinning to catch every minuscule detail in the crystal ornaments of the multi-tiered chandeliers, the swirling window panes providing a perfect view of the bright neon colors of the city down below, expensive woods for the cushioned furniture, and marble decorations atop every table top and surface.

"At least I'll die happy," he muttered, at which I couldn't help but laugh at.

Effie, now in a bombastic new change of clothes, walked into the living area from an upstairs door. "Ah, yes! Our lovely tributes. Like what you see? Victors get to live in this type of luxury for the rest of their lives, and even get to visit the capitol for the games or other special occasions like their victory tour and whatnot."

As if to diminish the effect she was aiming to achieve, Haymitch stumbled out of the kitchen holding a bottle of brown viscous liquid in each hand, more red-cheeked than a newborn baby.

"Drinks!" He cackled. "We get drinks! I get drunk. Woo-hoo!"

Oh dear. His absolute drunkenness probably meant he still didn't really believe in his tributes. I mentally prepared myself to not get any sponsors during the games.

"Time for you to go to bed, old man," I sighed fondly. "Come on, brush your teeth and wash your face. Or just dump your head in a bucket of suds - your hair could really use a washing."

Effie wrinkled her nose in agreement, waving a manicured hand by her nose.

"Off to bed with you lot," she agreed to everybody. "Tomorrow's the first day of training and it's good to do your very best to make allies and impress the gamemakers!"

"S'not it," Haymitch slurred, uncapping a bottle. "That's not right. S'not right."

He meant to say that it was best to keep your abilities to yourself, then reveal true abilities to the gamemakers private audience, but it wasn't like Yonnor and Effie could decipher his barely comprehensible speech. I shot a pair of thumbs up, which in turn made the man chortle in surprise and whoop loudly all the back to the bathroom, where retching noises could be heard.

My private quarters were as large as our house back in the Seam, styled in a wide studio styled penthouse. But when I tried to open the doors to the penthouse balcony to look at the busy streets full of interesting cultures, the doorknob immediately melted into its metal frame. I jolted backwards. The fact that the gamemakers needed to assure that tributes wouldn't commit suicide by possibly jumping out the window by locking us in had to be an extreme measure from more than one instance of teen suicide. I hadn't remembered watching any games where that had occurred, but Capitol technology was talented enough to perhaps create a robot for the public appearance full of fake blood for a theatrical and ultimately true looking death in the arena.

On a separate topic, the bathrooms were amazing. Several different nozzles, all at the most tissue deep massaging pressure mixed in with mesmerizing rose petal scented steam. A mint lay beside the sink, and when I chewed on it, a burst of sharp and cold flavor burned through my teeth and gums. Judging by the lack of toothbrush and toothpaste, that intense mint had served as both.

My clothes from before were no where to be seen, but my little elephant figurine rested on the expansive king bed's thin silky sheets.

"Good night, Gale. Good night, mom, Rory, Vick, and little Posy," I bid to the blank features of the elephant, tucked it against the lamppost by the bed, then fell face first into the pillows.


	3. Chapter 3

Waking up was a nightmare.

At first, with the feathery pillow and weightless sheets and warm pumpkin-cinnamon smell wafting through the air, it felt like one of those lovely day dreams people had while taking idyllic late summer picnics in lush open meadows of a quiet park. But then the sheets were too soft, too wrong, and it felt almost like snakes were slithering up my body and around my throat to choke me and kill - .

I jumped out of bed in an instant, blood pounding in my ears. When there was no immediate danger beside the horrible pit sinking back down my stomach when remembering 'I'm in the Hunger Games now,' my legs dragged the rest of my trembling body to the bathroom and tried to drown itself in the shower.

The options for scents had been removed from the shower stall alongside the gels and after shower moisturizer options.

Potentia revealed the reason behind why, when I greeted her at the breakfast table, smelling of pumpkin pie and cold autumn day drinks. The outfit laid out in the closet had been a simple black skin-tight tracksuit with irritatingly tiny zippers and silicon lined shoes that resembled athletic wear.

"Oh, absolutely marvelous, isn't that right, Gregorius?" She flattered, patting down my wild hair. "I handpicked the scents and facial gels for you that represented your district best."

Except the fact that Appalachia weren't particularly known for pumpkins?

Yonnor emerged from his room, smelling sharply of honeysuckle and wet grass. They weren't bad choices, per se, but both of us honestly preferred to remain scentless than have a distinct way to track us. I sincerely hoped our stylists didn't spray us with heavy perfumes right before entering the arena.

My district mate wore a similarly designed track suit to mine, except in an ashen grey, not coal black.

By the time Haymitch stumbled into the room, groaning about a hangover before immediately swinging back a large gulp of whiskey from his vest pocket's secret stash, avoxes had already set a large buffet of foods onto the long stretch of the glass table.

I had really thought the man had been convinced of my absolute conviction to win, but perhaps he was too damaged from his past experiences to truly break out of his self-destructive habits. My pity for him barely outweighed my heavy conviction to throttle him for drinking so uncaringly, not lifting a finger to help either of us.

"Anything to say to us, mentor?" Yonnor rightfully so bites out in between sips of coffee.

The last living victor of district twelve snarled when his flask finally came up empty. He tucked it back into his vest and leaned his head back against the chair childishly. "My advice to you? Be prepared for your obviously imminent death, and know that from the bottom of my heart, I'll always mourn for you."

That statement had to contain an inkling of truth, as every child's death took a toll on the man's mental health.

"Carbo-load," I suggested instead, shooting the drunken man a nasty glare. Or, tried to. Gale had always sad that my glaring looked more like I was on the verge of tears and was about to guilt-trip someone. "If finding food is difficult, we can try to gain as much fat weight as possible, so we can live longer on the starvation scale than others."

"Never do strength training exercises when doing that," Haymitch chimed in unexpectedly. "If you begin lifting weights while eating a high calorie diet, your metabolism will shoot up and you'll only starve to death quicker once you're out in the arena. I'd really recommend just eating normally, though, since overeating can cause interesting stomach problems."

Yonnor and I shared a look before drilling the still mildly unwilling mentor for more information.

He ended up clamming up by the fifth question, citing an urgent need to visit the mini bar in the kitchens, and practically ran away in his awkward hobbling gait.

I turned to Potentia. "So, what now?"

My stylist blinked, as if visually digesting the information, then smiled wider than a Cheshire cat's. "Aha! It's almost ten, so you should be going to the elevators now, where Effie will be waiting to lead you all to the training areas underground. Good luck, now, and make sure to flip your hair up every half hour so the pumpkin-cinnamon scent lasts as long as possible!"

Yonnor and I ignored our stylists with practiced ease, immediately bounding for the elevator, where the doors conveniently opened to reveal one Effie Trinket.

"Good, you're both here. I'll be taking you two down now. And remember," she warned as we stepped inside the glass tube. "the gamemakers are the audience to the gymnasium. They see everything you do from their seats. Some may even walk around the gymnasium to examine the training processes even closer, or to engage in a conversation with a particularly interesting tribute. Remember to smile, walk straight, and always be charming!"

In the large, monotonous designs of the expansive gymnasium, were built in bleachers all around the center training stage. About twenty gamemakers in deep violet robes sat on a focal stage where a theater-like opening had been built in for an open display of never ending feasts and wine. Even a few minutes earlier than ten a.m., we were the last to join the other twenty-two tributes standing in a loose semi-circle in front of a tall dark-skinned woman. An avox scurried over to us to pin on a "District Twelve" badge to our backs before the trainer spoke.

Her name was Atala, the head trainer for the districts' tributes. She explained the basic rules inside the training center and the training schedule. Tributes were free to enter any station of their or their mentor's choosing. No fighting with another tribute. Lunch would be served from twelve-thirty to one-thirty in a room adjacent to this one. Her words were concise and extremely clear, which I respected. Atala appeared to be a fair judge of a trainer.

Once released from her introduction, Yonnor immediately left my side to investigate the fire making station. The boisterous Careers veered off to claim the entire section of stations dedicated to large weaponry items, leaving the remaining shifty tributes to drift between the easier to handle knife stations and climbing stations. Because I didn't want to operate alongside someone I'd know would die in less than a week, I chose a station that everybody was avoiding.

"What station is this?" I asked politely, eyeing the trainer helper with carefully hidden disdain. The fact that this bearded old man had more pudge than a baby walrus while Gale and I still struggled to feed our family sometimes, really hit home the differences between the Capitol and the districts.

He laughed jovially, gesturing wildly at the ensemble of bronze wires and mechanical tools laid out on the ground. "This is the electrical and mechanical foundations station. Almost no one visits through here, but I keep recommending for this station to stay open for the victors out of respect for our beloved Beetee Latier."

Beetee Latier of district three, nicknamed "Volts" for having won the forty ninth Hunger Games using only a spool of wire and a well timed lightning strike. His year's Hunger Games had been set in a rocky tundra surrounded by a lightning field. The famed genius of a man had electrocuted the remaining six tributes using physics, mathematics, and a magical stroke of luck at being able to secure a spool of wire from the Cornucopia. Each year, there were weapons included in the Cornucopia that weren't really conventional items and possibly a gag-gift from a rich comedian to a gamemaker. However, Beetee had been able to very effectively win his games using just one spool of wire, so they appeared to have kept this specific station open ever since then, in hopes of seeing a new bright mind pop up and wow the crowd.

"Sure," I shrugged amiably, noticing a surprised look on a few gamemakers nearby. "Why not."

After an hour, I had memorized the basics of electricity and voltages in different types of metals and their conductivity, basic how-tos of building and fixing mechanical features, and a brief introduction on physics. Of course, I had taken a Physics course in college Before, but relearning all the complicated electromagnetism formulas and recalling the chain rule to calculate acceleration, speed, and velocity took my mind for a delightful trip down memory lane.

Because Haymitch had advised to spend no longer than an hour at each station, I thanked the man for the crash course and moved on.

It was eleven now, meaning I had an hour and a half till lunch. I filled that time period by focusing on the empty stations, still not having gathered enough nerves to visit the more popular and more likely exceedingly useful ones. I spent half an hour learning about weather patterns, how to read the sky based on temperature, color, density, winds, and clouds, and the telling signs given by the surrounding nature and wildlife. Perhaps this station truly could be put to use, but the woman's droning voice resulted in at least a third of the information going in one ear and out the other.

Worn out already, I let myself go to a station I knew I'd enjoy - climbing. The rope climbing lessons were full, but the lessons where the sharp, slick surface with streams of water squirting out periodically onto the rocks that were basically devoid of hand holds? Perfect.

Mud caked under my fingers and sprays of water misted my hair as I pounced up the side of the twenty foot tall climbing wall using nothing more than elegant and swift movements using every strategic nook barely the size of my knuckles. At the top, I rolled onto a provided small dry ledge that smelled dustier than the bathrooms at school back home.

"Six seconds," a hidden scoreboard emerged from the ceiling just above my little ledge. The monotonous tone of "six seconds" from the computer aided voice almost made me leap off the ledge, I had to admit.

Immediately, all the tributes stopped to stare at a chart forming on the screen, placing my name as first place in the rock climbing challenge. God fucking dammit.

A ladder emerged from a hidden panel by my side, but I ignored it in lieu of climbing back down the cliff side in another extraordinary display of dexterity. If I were to be going out, it might as well be with a bang, right?

The Careers rushed over from their spear throwing station to challenge my first place status. Being first place in a memory game like the boy from district three had announced just an hour ago - that was nothing special. Everybody moved on with their lives. But first place at rock climbing, a potentially life saving skill? That took the cake.

Using my slight stature, I breezed away from that back station to head over to a now unoccupied popular station - fire making. Gale and I knew how to make a fire using sturdy twigs and bits of string, but it seemed exceedingly useful to know how to build warmth through pretty much any and every biome on earth.

By the third day, I had gone through nearly all of the stations for at least a couple minutes, gaining the basic knowledge of what the station even was. I avoided the Careers, Yonnor, and everyone else who was basically bigger than me by more than fifty pounds. Not a hard feat, as I was pretty sure I tipped the scales at somewhere between eighty and ninety pounds at a hair above the five foot mark. In a previous life, this would've been called malnourished. Too skinny. Dangerously unhealthy. A growing girl needed to eat more, and such and such. For district twelve, this was on the better side of the scale. There were children in my age group at school who were as light as birds, with protruding ribs showing grotesquely through faded shirts and frail wrists as thin as their playground chalk sticks. Our family's daily intake of fresh meats from Gale's frogs and squirrels would surely not allow for Rory, Vick, or baby Posy to fall into such extreme levels of starvation and hunger.

I felt guilty gorging myself on feasts during lunch now reminded of my family. How were they? How did they feel about seeing my face plastered all over national television, seemingly enjoying the festivities of the Capitol? The sweet orange based sauce soaking the chicken dish dripped steadily off my fork and back onto the plate. Drip. Drip. Drip. I imagined Rory and Vick glimpsing into the extravagant food the Capitol had to offer and how they'd cry from the wonderful taste being like nothing they'd ever eaten before. That made me feel a little better, thinking about them. How excited they'd be when I returned home to their arms. If I returned home.

If I were to make it out the arena alive.

After the third day's lunch period, officials began calling out the names of the tributes in number and gender order. The time for the private showcases had arrived.

"Thist Roserock," The official called out, waking me out of my thoughts. The boy from eleven - had I been sitting here alone in my thoughts for that long? - stood up from his position on the other side of the cafeteria.

Five minutes later, the girl from eleven, a girl whose name I thought to be Zinnie but was actually Zanna Cresh, stood up and sauntered to the door. Three tables ahead was Yonnor drumming his fingers on the his table's surface. It felt awkward and empty with just me and him, especially since that we had come to the wordless mutual agreement to avoid each other during the pre-Arena times so that eventually trying to kill each other off during the actual games would be less awkward if we had actually bonded.

The fact that we had never interacted while inside our own district worked wonders for that type of distancing.

Eight minutes later, Yonnor left with the official, leaving me to dwell in my thoughts alone. What were my strengths? Creating traps, snares, ropes, and nets. Climbing virtually any type of rock or tree. Tracking. Foraging.

Initially, I had planned on forming an intricate snare using only the bare essentials, then writing a cheeky message on the ground that the gamemakers would surely enjoy. But as the official brought me into the empty gymnasium, surrounded by loads of everything I needed, I began to panic. Of course I had forgotten the part in the games where Katniss discovered the hard way that the district twelve female was the worst position to impress gamemakers. They were all tipsy or flat out drunk from their constant feast of refreshments, paying more attention to the salted hams and great big pots of fish stew avoxes brought out.

Everything from the wires of the electronics section to the crumbling leaves in the foraging section had been brought out. Instead of creating a clever snare that would rank me at somewhere between a six or a seven, I instead needed to be impressive.

Taking spools of wire, a self contained arduino chip, a power distribution panel, and several other random gadgets here and there, I worked on creating a masterpiece they wouldn't forget.

When the project was completed less than six minutes later, I gave a shrill and booming whistle, making all the feasting gamemakers turn their heads to me. I connected the electricity from the PDP to the first wire, then jumped to the side to watch my progress. I threw a fist sized rock against a tightly coiled line of wire woven between two standing platforms, then covered my ears. A deafening boom filled the gymnasium from my self made explosives trap. The use of explosives were unique to my district's coal mining, and I knew that this private session would definitely hammer in the connection between me and my pride for my district.

The head gamemaker, a man named Dresdee Harribel with indigo blue dyed skin, slowly began clapping. "Very good. You may return to your quarters, Miss Blaire Hawthorne."

I tilted my body forward, unsure whether or not to bow out of respectful deference, but decided against it and responded with a sweet smile before fleeing the room.

The main components of an improvised explosives device were power, initiator, explosive, and switch. The input, or trigger, had been via motion sensor of the trip wire. Instead of locking down into a typical mechanical motion trap, where a tripping the wire would result in a hatchet raining down, it triggered the power to generate in the planted bomb above or below, instantly killing the victim.

Even though the method was chaotic, running straight into a bomb surely made a quick, merciful death.

"Traps and snares?" Haymitched drawled as way of hello when the elevator opened to our floor.

Effie stood up from her seat by Yonnor, where wrinkles etched into his hardened jaw. "Ah, Blaire! How'd you do?"

Terrible. Absolutely terrified that the gamemakers didn't enjoy bombers, as those people were too eerily reminiscent of district thirteen's people. It had been a swell idea at the time, but now I was simply terrified.

"Meh. I think I did average," I lied, giving a half-shrug.

Our stylists, Potentia and Gregorius, entered through the elevator two hours later just in time for the official ranking scores to be announced to all of Panem. The lot of us snuggled deep into the long fluffy couch in front of the huge hologram TV. The Capitol born people squealed when the channel shifted to the nationwide broadcast of Caeser Flickerman announcing the premise of the games and the current games score. It felt utterly surreal, to be in the center of the media when all I wanted in this life was to wait for the second rebellion uprising to fix everything. I hadn't counted on actually being thrown into the games out of godforsaken unluckiness. Instead of being a content wallflower, biding my time for peace, I was now going to rather be memorialized in history as a victim of the sixty-ninth Hunger Games, or emerge a victor but with a sizeable amount of mental issues and PTSD from the arena.

"As you know," began Flickerman's smooth honey-like voice. "tributes are rated on a scale from one to twelve after three days of careful evaluation by the gamekeepers."

The beginning speech remained a constant throughout the years. As expected, the Careers all scored between eight and ten, the kids from three scored moderately high scores, the other districts scored between a range of four to seven.

"District Twelve." Everyone leaned forward in anticipation. "Yonnor Bayaurch. Score of eight."

He sunk back in relief alongside a gasping Gregorius and Effie. "A great score for district twelve," they cheered. "My, my, how wonderful."

And when the screen behind the famous host's body shifted to view a picture of my full body shot and portrait three quarter views of my head (how had they gotten those pictures? Digital artists?), Haymitch set his glass of scotch on the rocks down.

"Blaire Hawthorne. Score of nine."

Effie and Potentia screamed in their overwhelming joy at how impressive the score was, but all I could think was that at least the gamemakers had enjoyed the display, not gotten the wrong message.

I slumped backwards, feeling suddenly too tired to finish watching the broadcast.

It was unfair, all of it. That children were thrown into an arena and expected to fight to the death. That the Capitol made an eighteen year old pit against twelve year olds, thinking it to be a just, fair fight in response to the first rebellion all those years ago. Sixty nine years of Hunger Games, sixty nine years of suffering, sixty nine years of torture.

It was also unfair because I wasn't really a tiny thirteen year old girl. My mind was that of a woman passing thirty-three, more than twice as experienced and mature than the rest.

Really, majoring in Chemical Engineering and interning at a big shot power company gave me quite the leg up from the competition. Once the man from the electronics station had ignited the fire of passions from my previous life, tidbits of mathematical equations, how to spark a blinding white light using zinc and fire, and even a homemade battery from a lemon, zinc metal, copper nails, and some wires.

While not faced with moral dilemmas as seriously as a developing child would have, it still hurt to think that I'd have to kill innocents for Gale and I's selfish promise.

* * *

I woke up the next morning at the crack of dawn. Because there wasn't much to do in my room other than stare at the small wooden elephant still resting besides a lamppost, I tiptoed downstairs out of force of habit. So used to creaking stairs in our old family home, I learned to walk gently and silent over even the loudest of floorboards. As today was the day before interviews, also known to be a day of rest for tributes who had no need to learn how to talk to crowds or walk in high heels in one day, the closet had set out a simple black tank top and bohemian styled green shorts. All the clothes were comfortable, but almost too comfortable to the point where I forgot if I was even wearing clothes at all.

Effie found me like curled up between couch cushions and throw pillows watching television reruns of past Hunger Games. She reached for the remote and turned the screen off right as the eleventh Hunger Games finale film ended in a flourish of Mags Flanagan being crowned victor.

"We've got quite a bit of work cut out for you, Blaire," she sniped, tossing the remote away. "Come on, up you go, now. Haymitch somehow convinced me last night to help you for your interviews tomorrow night."

I recalled the woman helping Katniss with her form and posture in the books for a few hours. Did Effie not usually do that, directly help the tributes?

"Thank you," I remembered to say, knowing the woman needed to hear constant affection in her life.

Her green tinted lips stretched into a haughty smile before beginning our first lesson.

By lunch time, my ankles were more sore than the time Gale dared me to jump-kick a giant boulder with my bare feet. Due to my age, I doubted Potentia would even make any kind of heel on my shoes, but it was still good practice, this formal sort of stuff. She then taught me how to sit up straighter by relaxing the shoulders and having the small dip in my back always be perpendicular to the ground, not the other parts of the vertebrae.

"You've done a much better job than the past tributes," Effie said simperingly when all I wanted to do was face plant into my soup and sleep like the dead. "You might even make an impression. Of course, everyone can make an impression when there's Caesar Flickerman right next to them. You'll do just fine."

She dragged Yonnor into her clutches for the afternoon for his etiquette lessons. I stared down Haymitch, who was pouring copious amounts of a clear white liquid into cranberry juice.

"Your liver must be as damaged as your head after the games," I shot at him. He continued pouring his drink, then threw the empty bottle against the wall, where it broke in a terrifying noise into a million tiny pieces.

"Yeah, well. The Capitol offers live-in therapy services, if killing people in the arena ain't your thing."

"I know that everyone says they want to win, but don't you think I can do it? Become a sociopathic monster for the sake of seeing my family again?"

He laughed harshly. "The youngest ever victor to come out that arena was Finnick Odair at fourteen. But when he was fourteen, he was already six feet tall and was the prettiest peacock in the bunch. You're a thirteen year old squirt who somehow scored a nine in the training center. That means all the Careers will be hunting you down like a turkey for dinner. Just enjoy your last few days in the glamours of the Capitol."

He needed to hear a winning statement, stat.

"Bombs," I cut in abruptly. "That's how I scored that nine. I made a bomb."

He raised an eyebrow and set down his drink, as if to say "go on."

"I know I have above average intelligence, possibly could be considered smart. I made an explosive trap by making a wire trap motion sensor using eight feet of wire, copper nails, and an energy source of fire." I leaned forward menacingly. "I can win this."

"Then prove it."

* * *

"From district twelve, we'd like to welcome Blaire Hawthorne!"

Walking to the front of stage from where I had been waiting from the eeves, Caesar Flickerman pressed the three minute timer and began gesturing wildly at the crowd at my entrance, making them go even more wild. The cheering of the booming applause drowned out every last thought in my head, so it was only by reflex did I sit down on the pristine white chairs provided when the colorful host took my hand in signal.

He wore a lazy smile as the cheering slowed down. "So, Blaire. I understand that while you're young, you're still feisty. I mean, wow! - a score of nine? That's insane! Tell us how you did it!"

The crowd began clapping again while I struggled to start the sentence. "Well," I said casually. "Since it's illegal to disclose the private training show, I'll instead tell you what my strengths are."

A great big smile stretched across his face. "Whoa, I like this fire!"

The crowd agreed.

"I'm very good at climbing and making things like traps and snares. I'd like to think that out of all twenty-four tributes, I've got the best survival skills." My words were arrogant, but the Capitol lapped it up, enjoying the firey and snarky manner a little kid like me behaved.

The host nodded in agreement alongside the audience. "Wow! That's pretty impressive! Which reminds me, how do you think you compare against the other tributes? You're the smallest one in there, which means you get to be extremely sneaky."

Mentally, I congratulated him on providing an example of how smaller could mean sneakier, therefore allowing me to catch a few sponsors' eyes. He truly was a strong attribute to a victor's victory and for getting everyone sponsor deals.

"Well," I laughed, curling a stray curl of hair by my ear (an intentional design because Potentia liked my natural sprightly aura or some other divine bullshit). "Because of my stature, I could chop off someone's knees before they even looked down. It's great, right?"

People whooped and whistled at that statement. Flickerman clutched at his stomach and bellowed out deep chortles. "I love that! Wow! We've got a natural fighter right here! From what I can gather, you're young, you're smart, and you're definitely skilled at surviving. Hear that, sponsors? We've got ourselves an amazing tribute from district twelve!"

Those words rightfully should have shaken me to the core in the fear that other tributes would gunning for me now, hoping to steal off potential sponsors. However, Caesar Flickerman had essentially demanded that the audience sponsor the girl from district seven after she proclaimed that she wanted to win to pay off her baby sister's medical bills. That tribute, Cynthia Corinne, had only garnered a score of four, so I had in full confidence that her pity-ploy would not work in the arena, where the Careers would be kicking her into a six foot deep grave.

"How does district twelve and the Capitol compare?" He asked, knocking me out of my temporary stupor.

The exquisite food. The out of the box fashion choices. The loopy accent where people spoke by moving their mouth as little as possible. The existential crisis of being under President Snow's dictatorial styled regime. It spoke volumes of the sway of the consumer market about how communism hadn't been put into place (yet).

_Panem et circenses_. Food and entertainment.

"It's amazing," I gushed in half-truths. "I've never known such luxury before. Back home, you'd be lucky to eat three meals a day. Over here, I can press a button in my room and a server knocks at my door ten minutes later with a tray full of sugary treats!"

Playing the amazement card? No problem.

"And last question, as we are running out of time - " the crowd groaned at this, at which I was relieved that they seemed sad to let me go, hopefully signifying that enough of them chose me as their favorite. " - do you have anyone important back home who you want to win the games for?"

A pause.

"My family," I said resolutely, staring straight into a zooming hovercraft camera at the base of the stadium. "I love my family more than anything. I promised to them that I'll win the games no matter what, just to see their smiles again. I've got the best, most hardworking mom in the world, a twin brother, Gale, who I swear knows me better than I know myself. And I've got a pair of twin brothers, Rory and Vick, who are five years younger. And a little baby sister, Posy, who's going to be turning two years old next month."

The crowd cooed at the mention of Posy, then the buzzer lit up.

"Aww, so sad to see you go! I wish you the best of luck, Blaire Hawthorne!"

People applauded respectfully as I took my leave.

* * *

"Why's she saying weird stuff?" Vick tugged on Gale's arm, pointing at the rickety screen. The Hawthornes still owned a physical screen the shape of a lumpy box - a rarity, given how common hologram technology had become in the past century.

Blaire, sitting on a staged platform that sparkled brighter than the lake on a summer day and wearing a shimmery rose-gold dress that had to cost more than a thousand tesserae, spat out a disgustingly sappy speech to please the Capitol viewers. "She needs to pretend to be nice," Gale replied after a long pause. "If the Capitol likes you, you survive longer in the games."

Vick huffed. "Whaddya mean 'survive longer?' Of course she's going to win!"

"Yeah! Blast through 'em all!" Rory cheered from the kitchen. Gale heard a light slap and an "ouch." Probably mom reprimanding him for yelling inside.

When his twin sister's interview ended with a full hearted applause from the audience, panic tightened in his chest. He knew Blaire was more than capable of surviving alone based on their own experiences in the mountains outside the district's fences, but her unusually high ripple in the crowd made her stand out more than she could handle on her own.

Blaire's knife skills only extended to whittling and carving - creation. She had never been a destructive person, never enjoyed cruel activities. She leapt from tree branch to tree branch like those monkey tricks he saw on TV once, climbed steep slopes as fast as her normal running speed, and had an unnaturally keen eye for tracking animals. Without her around, he had been forced to rely more on Katniss' hunting ability to detect near unnoticeable shifts in the wind's direction and her skill with large game. Some days, he just wanted to sit in front of the screen all day, grasping at memories of his sister, but by Katniss' urging, they spent nearly all of their daylight hours productively hunting down food for their family's bellies.

"I like her dress," Posy whispered shyly, toddling from her spot on the matted floor. Her wooden animal toys laid chaotically strewn all over her little play corner. "Blay-yuh is sooooo pretty."

She still couldn't pronounce Blaire's name correctly. Everyone thought it was adorable. Except for Rory, Gale supposed, because Posy kept calling him "Wor-yee" instead of "Ro-ry."

"But if she wins, we have to live next to that mean old drunk guy! Can't we just ask the Mr. President Snow to let her leave?" Vick questioned innocently.

Gale couldn't bring himself to answer.


	4. Chapter 4

I stood in the steel walled room, empty and alone. Haymitch and Effie didn't really believe in this year's batch of tributes, not really. All Effie really thought about was getting promoted to a better district or dreaming about making waves within the fashion industry. Haymitch hadn't really tried to pull through for either Yonnor or I, ending up drinking himself sick at the tense dinner last night after the interviews.

Perhaps Cinna cared enough about Katniss to see her go, but Potentia and Gregorius had friends in the city to watch the opening of the sixty ninth annual Hunger Games with.

Pacing around the room to distract myself from my poisonous thoughts, I ended up examining the material of the clothes for the games. They comprised of a nylon black tank top, dark grey skin tight pants, clunky leather boots strapped up with at least two feet's worth of lace strings, and a papery grey bomber jacket. My token was safely stuffed deep in the pants' side pockets, a comforting weight against my thigh for all the trials and tribulations to come.

"Tributes, please step inside the tube," a metallic voiced churned overhead on the speakers. Swallowing down the urge to vomit out of nerves, I stepped inside and locked my fate for the rest of my life.

The tube sealed shut with a hiss of steam before it shot straight up to the arena field.

At first, everything was so bright from the sudden shift in surroundings, but as my eyes calmed down and everything became less blurry, this year's arena was revealed. I wanted to cry.

"Ladies and gentlemen, let the sixty ninth Hunger Games begin!" Boomed Claudius Templesmith's announcement.

In the sixty seconds ticking by all too fast, I drank in my surroundings, hating more and more of it with each passing moment. A desert. A burning desert, with miles of large, sandy dunes and abnormally huge cactus plants every so often dotted my peripheries. The shining bronze cornucopia sat in the center of all twenty four tributes' metal platforms. I caught nearly everyone finally taking note of the sweltering heat of the desert and tugging off their jackets.

A bad idea, as these jackets were meant to protect our bare skin from blisters, sun rash, and burns. But I supposed not everyone knew that, not having had the extensive childhood education I had had all those years ago.

I squinted in the direction of the cornucopia's mouth, analyzing which were the most useful and if there were water supplies. There, off in the distance, some twenty feet to the left of the mouth and close to the boy from eleven's platform, was a single spool of especially conductive alloy metal wire that I knew the gamemakers this year put in for me.

And when Claudius Templesmith, the legendary announcer of the games (surprisingly not Caeser Flickerman, but I guessed the two of them worked on different projects), started counting down into the single digits, my mind sharpened to the clearest it had ever been.

The gong rang.

Faster than ever before, I darted to the boy from eleven's platform, glad that he and all the tributes surrounding him headed immediately to the center of the action. In ten seconds, I scooped up the spool of wire, stuffed it into my jacket, and ran to pick up a dark purple backpack off at the side. Someone else headed towards the same backpack, but it was securely fastened to my back by the time the first cannon was shot. The first cannon signaled to everyone that the Careers had reached the weapons at the cornucopia and it was very much time to leave. Not needing any other warning, I leaped out of crossfire from a boy throwing knives in my general vicinity and ran into the burning desert.

Once, a lifetime ago, I had a grandfather who stayed out too long on his boat during his weekly fishing trips. It had been the middle of a sweltering August, a record breaking high temperature showing all over national television. By the time a first responder team managed to booey his boat back to shore, he had suffered from heat stroke and died. Heat exhaustion set in before heat stroke, and I knew that water had to be a first priority, out here in the sands.

I must have ran for at least an hour straight because my lungs started to give out and my legs felt like jelly. In the desert, there were enough shadowy dunes and craven rock surfaces jutting out next to a bunch of cacti, but my brain was telling me to avoid the rocky platforms and stick with large, sandstone thick dunes. I didn't know what types of mutations of scorpions, snakes, or spiders lived in the cracks in the rocks, but any kind of desert cave was bound to be bad. My throat wasn't parched for water yet, but sweat dripped off my forehead by the gallon. Needless to say, I still kept the jacket on.

While situated behind a monstrously large dune, under its sweet shade, I spilled out the contents of my backpack after pulling the spool of wire from my jacket. An empty leather water pouch, a thin maroon blanket small enough to count as one of those autumn scarves, a rubber band, and a pack of dried fruits and nuts. A pack of essentials, minus the water.

A scaly lizard zipped past my feet.

The animals of the desert needed their water, too. I followed the lizard, hoping that it would lead me to a clean source of hydration, but a cacophony of cannons fired through the arena, distracting my senses long enough to lose track of the lizard.

Gamemakers always caught the first death in the cornucopia, but waited until the Careers cleared the area for the hovercrafts to carry away and count the number of bodies. I could only hope that they didn't head in my direction. In the end, fifteen people had died in the initial bloodbath. This number was unusually high, bringing the remaining survivors to a single digit number on only the first day.

If there were only four Careers this year, this meant that five people had spread themselves out among the dunes. Due to the severity of the climate, at least one more would die by the end of the night.

I prayed that it wouldn't be me.

* * *

"What do you think of this year's batch of tributes, Claudius?"

Gale glued his eyes onto the screen, heart still hammering in his chest. Nine survivors. Only nine left on the first day. This year's Hunger Games arena had to be the most brutal in decades, and his sister was a participant.

The screen split between the live footage following the popular Careers as they headed east, the exact direction of Blaire, and the two legendary hosts.

"Ooh, I don't know, Caeser. Have you seen Rogley's abs? That district one boy is smoking hot!" The camera zoomed in on the blistering sands. "Literally!"

A laugh track commenced.

"Shouldn't you be at school?" Mom yelled from the outside, where she was hanging her customer's linens to dry.

Gale fumed over the forced nonchalance from everyone. Mom pretending everything was alright, Vick and Rory still too young to truly understand what being in the Hunger Games entailed, and little Posy who didn't even know what death meant. He tried going to school in the morning, but everyone, including his teacher, kept asking him awkward questions about his well being.

He had punched his (their!) bedroom wall earlier that morning and accidentally sprained his wrist in the process, making it unsuitable to lose himself in hunting. Thus, the television. Watching his one and only twin fight her way through the blood sports.

Blaire's cold grey eyes widened on camera as she circled around an eight foot tall cactus. Separate angles showed her lips moving. "Do cacti have water?" The audio picked up. To the side, the hosts cracked a joke, but all Gale could do was watch his sister intensely. He didn't know what the word "cacti" was, but he bet that it was the weird looking plant.

She pulled out a rubber band from her backpack, backed away a sizeable distance, then shot the rubber band straight at the lime green spike covered husk. Nothing happened. She pulled a scraggly rock half the size of her head from the base of a sand dune, then chucked it into the cactus. Still, nothing.

A cunning light glinted in the girl's eyes - a light Gale knew all too well. Blaire was about to do something incredibly genius or incredibly stupid. It varied day to day.

She pulled out a spool of wire, then tightened a noose around the midsection of the plant. With a harried yank, the upper trunk tumbled straight down with surprising intensity, kicking up a cloud of sand.

The screen split again to welcome back the hosts after a small break.

"Whoa, we can see here that Miss Blaire Hawthorne is the first to discover that this arena actually has the most amount of accessible drinkable water out of all the past arenas," Caesar mused, bringing Gale into shock.

"Yes, yes," Claudius said. "In this specially designed arena, the miles and miles of desert have quite a few cactus plants filled with water inside."

The other side of the screen zoomed in to see Blaire greedily filling up her waterskin with the liquid revealed.

"But the catch is, the mutations don't like people stealing their water."

* * *

Because the water might have been contaminated - or just might be pure poison, who knew - I made sure to fill the waterskin to the brim, then splashed a few drops at my feet, where a few lizards curiously nibbled my shoes. At first, I had thought them to be mutations, but if they were, I'd definitely be dead by now.

One brave brown lizard scurried over to the drops and sucked it up. It scurried back. When the lizard didn't drop dead after a full minute after sucking up the water droplets, I deemed it safe enough to drink.

A shrill screech made me whirl around, back at the cactus stump. A giant bird resembling the lovechild of a bald eagle and a vulture crouched accusingly on top of the plant stump's rim, its narrow black eyes piercing straight into my soul. Judging by its size, its wingspan had to be at least thirteen feet wide.

With a creature of flight, running away, back turned, had to be useless. I wouldn't be able to spot any attacks. The creature cawed accusingly, its claws crunching the green barrel-like rim. And then it darted forward.

I jumped to the side, but a wing beat me back straight into a craggy dune. Sand sloped into my eyes and they burned from the contact as the bird changed directions and leaped towards me again. While dodging much more nimbly this time, I noted how it didn't bother using flight to attack. Perhaps the bird was too heavy to fly?

It screeched again, this time louder and more high pitched than before. My ears felt like they were bleeding as it jumped to attack again, its beak shining fiercely underneath the blazing hot sun. I didn't have any weapons. No knives, no spears, no nothing. The blanket could be used to momentarily distract the bird, but it was too quick to let me tie it up in wire.

"Oh hey, it's the girl from twelve!" Clamored someone from behind, and I risked a quick look back to see that the two Careers from district one had caught up. In the distraction, the bird had darted forward, ripping a large gash through the meat of my left shoulder. I howled from the pain just as the bird careened back into the two tributes.

"Rogley, hel - !" The female tribute screamed, and I heard the gruesome snap of bones and tearing of flesh before turning around with a hand clutched over my bloody mess of a shoulder. Rania Gnaeus, the female district one Career known for her deft skill with a javelin, was little more than a sack of sticky, wet meat. The bird had ripped a hole with its beak straight through her pelvis, leaving behind a pair of detached legs and a broken upper body. The bird mutation clawed through her remains, tugging apart slippery meat of her exposed trachea in a godawful squishing noise.

I ran. I ran and ran and ran, until the sun pounded behind my eyes in dry white spots and the noises of terror that girl from one had made cemented itself into the rhythm of my feet beating down on the dry grains of sand.

My head swarmed with flashing neon colors, splashes of blood, and a deep ache that felt a millennium old. Finally, as the sun receded into the horizon and a cool rush of wind breezed through my hair, the mild sting of sunburn pulled me back into reality. In a clockwork motion, not really thinking about my actions, I settled down behind a tall and unmoving sandstone craggy dune, drinking half my waterskin in a blur of motion. Hidden cameras undoubtedly had caught the terror worn cravenly on my expressions throughout the mindless journey out, carelessly tumbling this way and that, allowing the dry heat to fester into the gaping wound oozing viscous yellow pus.

Taking out the long thin blanket from my pack, I ripped it in half using strength I didn't realize I had and wrapped the cloth around my head in a middle eastern manner. Why I hadn't thought to do this for head protection, I didn't know. Using the remaining water from the waterskin, I poured out in dribbles onto the aching flesh of the shoulder, biting the inside of my cheek to stop from bawling.

Sponsors. Some sponsors would definitely do some good right now.

"I don't know if you can hear me, Haymitch," I mumbled into the ground, finally allowing myself to try to rest. "But I forgive you."

What did I forgive him for? I couldn't reply in just one answer, as he had done a lot of bad in his life. But I still forgave him for being a drunkard of a mentor, probably less coherent than district six's morphling mentors from all his strong brandy. I wanted to tell him all this and more, but the haze of fatigue caught up to me soon after finishing tying up my shoulder with the remaining part of the blanket, and I collapsed into the darkness.

The sound of the national anthem startled me awake. It was very much night time by then, so I had gotten a few hours of sleep in. Last night, I had slept terribly, tossing and turning in anxiety, so I couldn't imagine very much was keeping me awake at the moment other than the blaring noise of song.

However, the winds had shifted the shape of the land though the night, and I had to shake off several gallons of sand off my legs to sit up properly and view the projected hologram screen.

The female Career from one. A boy from three. Both tributes from four, five, and six. The girls from seven and eight. Both tributes from nine and eleven. The boy from ten. And when Yonnor's name and profile popped up on the screen, I could barely dig up an ounce of remorse.

That left three Careers, a girl from three, a boy from seven, a boy from eight, a girl from ten, and me.

Four girls, four boys.

_May the odds ever be in your favor._

I woke up just as the sun began to rise, vibrant purples, pinks, and reds shooting across the blurry skies. Due to the undying winds of the night, I had to dig half my body out from underneath a pile of sand and shake off all the itchy grains that had somehow burrowed their way into my headscarf. A need for water parched my throat and cracked my lips, but I was hesitant to cut open a cactus again, especially after yesterday.

My skin blanched at the thought of yesterday. The girl from one. Her detached limbs strewn across the ground, staining the sands red. The fowl smell of her innards. An expression of horror forever memorialized on her features.

What was her name? Who was she? Did she have a family who cared for her? Little brothers? A baby sister?

Ignoring those haunting thoughts, I snacked on a few nuts and pieces of dried fruit in attempts to avoid the eventual battle of thirst.

Due to the extra few pounds of fat gained from eating lavishly in the Capitol, I didn't need to eat as much as I had feared. There were enough lizards around to catch, and the heat waves wafting from all sides of the desert would do well to hide any smoke signal. My pack of nuts and dried fruits didn't seem to be getting any lighter - another good sign. But dehydration was an issue, especially in a burning desert.

Because it was useless to walk underneath the blistering sun all day, I stayed under my shadowy dune, humming a raw melody from memory. A children's song. Something about roses and death. How morbid.

With only eight tributes left, only a third remaining, this would be when the hosts started interviewing friends and families of each victor to add to the screen time. It had been maybe twenty years since a tribute from district twelve had made the top eight, so I imagined the shock of any of the television program hosts traveling to the Seam just to get a glimpse of Gale's put-out choice words about my situation. That made me giggle, but I forced myself to choke down the rest of the giggles and smiles to not seem unhinged to the entirety of Panem.

So I thought about my family again, to create a somber mood. How were they doing? How many animals had Gale caught in the past week? Did Rory and Vick get over their little argument the morning of my reaping ceremony? How was mom? Had she requested a break from work to alleviate her stress levels? And then I thought about how Gale would be forced into the spotlight for interviews again, in just five years, for Katniss' Hunger Games.

He would hate that. He hated any kind of attention. His good-natured, selfless little butt couldn't help but do everything in his power to stay out of the homing beacons. The girls at school lapped it up and more than five of my students had come up to me proclaiming a crush on my brother.

Finally, when the dryness in my throat became unbearable, I crept out of my hidey hole and peeked over the top of the dune, observing the seemingly eternal stretch of land. I counted five cacti before deciding enough was enough and the best chance of sneaking water was going back to my well, a day's journey from my position. There couldn't be contaminations in the water, or at least not any notable ones, because there was a resounding lack of insects in the arena for vector travel, and the air sucked out all the humidity anyway. I'd be lucky to scrape off the inside goopy flesh.

That was how my day was spent, traveling back in the same direction, humming old show tunes and pop verses as my tongue dried and throat crackled with blood. Soon enough, not quite there yet, the pounding in my head retched on as painfully as the rot in my shoulder and just a rough breeze was enough to lay me flat on my back. When it becomes clear that travelling back to find water the same way was going to be impossible, I pull myself upright with wobbly legs and drag on south towards a plane of rocky crevices. I had been avoiding them for the past day and a half due to the implication that crevices and caves had something stored up inside, like a gargantuan spider, but I doubted the gamemakers wanted to kill off everyone in less than three days. Being down to final eight on the first day had to have been some sort of record, as it usually took until the fifth day of the games for that to happen. Instead of creating more deaths, there had to be _drama_. A new mutation that wouldn't kill, but cause intense nightmares. The field shifting to reveal a hidden dungeon. Finding an oasis. The fan favorite receiving a present from a sponsor. Those kinds of things had been lacking from this hellish arena so far.

With the last of my strength, I blearily stumbled down a little wave of sand, where it hardened into a nook. And then just barely caught myself before dropping face first into the deepest crevice ever seen. A gust of musty air breathed outwards, brushing my hair upwards to the sky. Whatever was down there felt older than the gods.

This led to an insane idea trickling into my head.

My undershirt, being the least useful clothing article at the moment, was the prime ingredient. Aware that possibly the entirety of Panem could be watching me at this moment, I made sure to take off the shirt from underneath the jacket as gracefully as possible. I ripped up the cloth into little strips, where I began knotting a perfect contraption against the dry yet sturdy mangled weed roots creeping up the sides of the crevice. Gripping my wires, I trotted off to the nearest cactus and started the cycle all over again. After refilling my waterskin and wiping off as much dirt, blood, and dust from my body, a single caw flitted from above. It was by miracle alone that I was able to dodge the mutation's first strike. It slammed straight into the ground where I had just been, so I took my chance immediately and dashed back to the crevice. Just the slightest whirring noise ticked my ears and I immediately swerved to the side, avoiding yet another attack.

"Come and get me, you stupid bird!" I rasped out, waving my arms maniacally. Said bird screeched powerfully and kicked off once again, shining beak honing in. I hooked one foot into a noose laying strategically just at the edge of the cliff, then fell backwards into the great beyond, the mutation following.

Because of the bird's wing structure and aerodynamic body, it plummeted all the way down the deep blackness. An unearthly growl shuddered from below, and that was when I swung myself to my side, grabbing onto the rocky walls and climbing back up. Heart still pounding and ultimately relieved that my handmade rope had held up (guess those Capitol cloths are made of sturdier stuff), I untied the noose from my ankle and gathered up all my supplies back into my pack.

Now that I had a fresh source of water for the rest of the day, or however long cactus water held, everything seemed bearable again.

I drank so much water I could hear it sloshing in my belly, and then cleaned every last nick of skin on my person. When I felt squeaky clean and refreshed and the barrel of cactus water was almost empty, it was finally time to reinspect my ever growing wound.

It didn't smell yet, which was a good sign that rot hadn't set it or anything too damaging. But there must have been some sort of nasty bacteria under the mutation's claws, as the barely clotting gash was surely infected. Its scabs were less of a hard shell and more of a protective layer of red-brown ooze.

"Wow, it'd sure be great for a few sponsors right now," I muttered under my breath, then cursing myself for drawling in sarcastic tones. While I disapproved of Haymitch's abundant drinking, it wasn't like he'd ever get right in the head to suddenly snap into sanity and pay attention.

Except for the girl on fire.

Katniss was a bit of a socially awkward and distant kid, from what I had seen, but the slight stammer whenever Gale mentioned her name or the sneaky expressions the twins wore whenever Gale and Katniss hung out on the recess field together meant that there was something more to her than what I cared to investigate. The trauma from losing your father to having to take care of your entire family alone probably had something to do with her distant attitude. Yeah, that was it.

A sharp metallic chirp echoed against the aggravating desert heat. A white box no larger than my head floated down from wherever, landing at my feet.

Oh god.

I grabbed the gift and scurried to a hidey spot behind a miniature mountain range of dunes. Inside, a small pot of white goo. There was only as much ointment as a matchstick box, so I made sure to conservatively apply the medicine to the worst of the wound. Instantly, the majority of the pain was relieved and a stress I hadn't known was there lifted from my mind. This medicine, the chemically innovative type, had to cost a pretty penny. I wondered if having a sponsor to afford this much spelled out certain trouble for my future, or an ignorable dread.

"Thank you," I rose my voice to the invisible cameras. "It is much appreciated."

No matter what it took, I was going to win the games.


End file.
